


Godstories

by theseaanemone



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous Morality, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, F/F, Fantasy, Magic, POV Multiple, Politics, Revolution, Steampunk, Torture, War, interconnected narrative, my inability to think of tags in an order that makes sense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24640108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseaanemone/pseuds/theseaanemone
Summary: It is said that when the gods fell they did not die but were reborn human, lifetime after lifetime, without memory of what they once were, tied together in life and in death, for in every lifetime they circled each other endlessly and died together, on the anniversary of their fall. This is a myth, until it is not.Godstories is a fantasy series spanning two and a half decades of war and rebellion. It is a story of nine people who, after a lifetime spent crossing paths, die on the same day, in the same city. This starts off as an anthology series but becomes increasingly interconnected.





	1. The Girl Who Crossed Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Not all tags apply to each chapter, so I'll be posting content warnings for individual chapters.

_Many years ago, when the world was new and so were the people, who had come to this empty land from far away, there lived a creature that was not quite human. It emerged from the forest one day wearing the face of one of the hunters who lived on the coast, and though they soon realized it was not she, they took the creature in and called it the Traveler, and taught it many things, and learned many things in return, for the Traveler knew much of the forest but little of family. At first the Traveler changed often, first imitating whole bodies and then piecemeal: a nose from one, eyes from another, hair from a third. Years passed and the Traveler developed a body of their own, sometimes man and sometimes woman and sometimes neither, and though often they wandered, always they came back._

**Month of the Thief, 808**

Janalack Nabaran had an idea. This was a dangerous thing indeed, for she was not long past her seventh birthday and had yet to encounter a catastrophe so grave as to temper her curiosity with caution. 

Currently she sat on the floor of her bedroom with her possessions piled in a ring around her: towering stacks of books filled with pages of tiny black letters packed tight — really these belonged to her mother and father, but in Janalack’s estimation they were hers, for she was the only one who read them, who spent hours and hours huddled beneath the covers when she was supposed to be asleep deciphering hand-drawn diagrams annotated in cramped, smudgy writing —; clothes of good quality though of little use to her current purpose, being better suited to sitting in a classroom or paraded before her mother’s noble friends than to adventuring; dried fruit and flatbread stolen from the kitchen by way of food, and also a block of hard cheese purchased from the market with the scattered accumulation of spare change hidden beneath a pile of old stockings. 

She skimmed her fingers over the leather- and cloth-bound spines of the books. Which to bring? There was the _Botanical Compendium_ , most likely of little use; she doubted the other realms held the same plants as her own. Also it was nearly as wide across as her body and took both hands to lift. Beside it sat the _Guide to the Foreign Realms_ , an ancient notebook bound in cracking leather. She tucked it into her bag behind her raincoat. 

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Janalack’s eldest sister, Cassinat, with whom she shared a room in an as yet unsuccessful effort to keep Janalack out of trouble, stood in the doorway still dressed for court in a flowing blue gown to match her eyes, hair done up in thousands of miniscule braids — border-braids, in the Talthan parlance, though in Cepan they were common enough to have no special designation — swept up in an intricate complex on top of her head. Crossing the room in a few quick strides, she tugged open the curtains

“I was sneaking,” said Janalack, indignant. 

“Not very well.” 

Cassinat sat herself in front of the mirror, where she began wiping away the colourful designs it had recently become fashionable for the young men and women of the court to paint around their eyes. Strangers on occasion informed her of her beauty, not so much because of her appearance — she was rather twiggy, her deep brown skin beset by the myriad of inconveniences brought on by adolescence, her face round, tapering suddenly to a pointed chin and decorated with features slightly too small and too close together for the space they were afforded — but rather because she carried herself in such a way that one’s eyes skipped over her physical appearance altogether, or so she claimed. Janalack, who looked very much like her oldest sister only shorter and with more leaves in her hair, supposed this must be true, as usually when someone commented on her appearance it was to demand she take a bath. 

“But you didn’t know where I was,” said Janalack. She had decided to bring the _Botanical Compendium_ after all and was trying to fit it into her bag. 

“I did know, on account of you weren’t anywhere else,” said Cassinat. She eyed the bag suspiciously. “Are you running away again?” 

“It’s not running away, it’s adventuring,” said Janalack. 

“It’s dangerous,” said Cassinat, who was fifteen and thought she knew better than everyone. “What if you get bitten by a snake, or fall down a hole and break your neck? What if you get kidnapped and held for ransom?” 

“Snakes only bite if you’re mean first. Plus most kinds aren’t even venomous, and also I read how to make the antidote and it’s not even hard.” 

Cassinat sighed at her. “It was an example. Besides, I doubt you could make an antidote all by yourself in the middle of the forest while your leg is rotting off. Then while you’re dying your last thought will be that you should have listened.” She stood, face clean, border-braids hanging loose down to her waist. She flicked Janalack gently on the forehead with painted nails. “Come on. Time for dinner.” 

***

The family ate at a long oak table in the courtyard, protected from sun and rain by a green canopy that cast everything beneath it in the same colour — Janalack was rather fond of it, for all her mother complained it made them look sick, and also that red was more in fashion that season; it was like eating in the forest except Janalack hardly ever discovered interesting new bugs. Presently her mother, a stately woman by the name of Saranan, emerged from the house in court robes of silver and blue, having instilled a healthy fear of her wrath into the serving boy as was her custom before each meal. After her trailed her husband, Reya, a considerably less stately man who had begun his life as a tailor. They placed themselves at either end of the table, their children two to a side between them. 

“Tavi and I will be away for dinner tomorrow. Lady Taranatic has a daughter near his age — a tolerant girl, or so I hear,” Saranan said as the serving boy appeared hesitantly at her shoulder. She cast despairing eyes down the table at her son, a gawky, sullen boy of nine years who looked half that. 

“I don’t want to,” he said to his empty plate. 

“That attitude is precisely why this betrothal has been a trial for us all. With Nayonen I thought it could be no worse, but oh, how you _insist_ on proving me wrong… and then of course there will be Janalack in a few years’ time, if some accident is not merciful enough to strike me down before then.” 

Nayonen wiped theatrically at her eyes. At eleven years she was the second eldest of Janalack’s siblings and had recently begun work as apprentice to the village clockmaker; accordingly she wore her hair short, in the style of craftspeople and labourers. She said, “Mother, I can’t believe you demoted me to third-worst child. How will I live with the shame?” 

“Nayonen, you know your mother doesn’t think of you like that,” said Reya. 

Saranan fixed him with sharp, pale eyes. “Do not tell me what I mean, dear.” 

“Janalack is running away again,” interrupted Cassinat. As one, the table turned towards her

“Adventuring,” said Janalack, and then, “you weren’t supposed to tell them, traitor.” 

“You are absolutely forbidden from leaving this house,” said Saranan. Reya waved a placating hand in her direction. He circled the table to kneel at Janalack’s side. 

“You are still a child, Janalack. You cannot go wandering about by yourself.” 

“ _Adventuring_ ,” Janalack reminded him through a mouthful of curried fish. 

They were all, she thought, being horribly unfair: she’d never once been kidnapped, or fallen in a hole, or been bitten by a snake. Once she’d fallen out of a ketazin tree and had to hobble around with her ankle wrapped for a full three weeks afterwards, on account of, she was certain, her mother bribing the doctor to keep it wrapped after it had healed so that Janalack was stuck at home — the tree belonged to Lord Zenaravet, who was so enraged at Janalack picking and eating his ketazin harvest he’d called off his son’s betrothal to Nayonen, even though the fruit had been very sour and also Nayonen once tried to drown her betrothed in a pond, an incident she insisted had been an accident — in the aftermath Saranac had been furious, vowing loudly to keep Janalack chained to her bed until she died of old age. 

Reya said, “I know you’re angry now, but I promise you will understand when you’re older.” 

All at once Janalack came up with a plan, elegant in its simplicity: she puffed out her chest, put on her most winning smile, and lied. “I am convinced,” she said. “Now I see that adventuring is dangerous. I must think about what I have learned. Please, may I be excused?” 

Her father’s face contorted strangely. He made a strangled noise at the back of his throat. “Why don’t you finish your dinner.” 

***

Cassinat followed her up to their bedroom. She followed her in the garden. She “just happened” to drop something on the ground outside the washroom every time Janalack went in, or else develop a sudden fascination with the photograph of a scowling great-ancestor that hung opposite. She read her a bedtime story (“but I know how to read,” protested Janalack) about a little girl who wandered off in the forest and got eaten by a giant.

“There are giants in the forest?” asked Janalack, who spent a lot of time there and could not think of anywhere big enough for one to hide. “They can’t be _that_ giant. Maybe they’re just really, really tall people.” 

“The point is you should listen to your parents,” said Cassinat. 

Janalack patted her sister on the arm. “Don’t be afraid of the giants. Probably they wouldn’t eat you even if they were there, on account of it’s cannibalism and they would get sick. Plus Morenet from school lives right next to the forest and she’s never seen a giant even once,” said Janalack. Her sister still looked upset, so she added, “It’s okay if you’re scared. I’ll protect you.” 

“I am not afraid of giants. You’re missing the point entirely,” said Cassinat.

Janalack patted her again. “I won’t judge you,” she said. Their father sometimes liked to give lectures on how to treat people, and they usually included not judging people. 

“Never mind, just go to sleep,” said Cassinat. 

Janalack rolled over to face the wall. Her bag sat at the end of the bed, fully packed. All she needed to do was wait for Cassinat to fall asleep. 

“How come they live in the forest?” she asked. 

“What?” said Cassinat. 

“The giants. They should live on the plains, so they have more space to move around.” 

“Giants aren’t real, Janalack.” 

She thought on this for a moment. “So I _can_ go into the forest.” 

Cassinat groaned. “It means mother and father are older, and when people are older they know about more things that could hurt you, so you need to listen to them when they tell you something is dangerous.” 

“But I know more about the forest than them, so really they should listen to me.” 

“Quit misunderstanding me on purpose,” said Cassinat. 

“I’m _not_ ,” said Janalack. 

She lay very still beneath the covers, listening to Cassinat’s breathing. Every few seconds she rolled over — usually she went to sleep much later than her sister. Janalack inched a toe out of bed to rest on the top of her bag. Maybe she would find giants, not in her own world but in some other. Or else something even better than giants, something no one else ever found before her. Something with lots of legs, or that could fly, or breathe fire, or all of those at once. One day she would see snow and walk on ice and climb to the top of a mountain and fill books with all her discoveries. 

On the other side of the room, Cassinat snored. Carefully, Janalack pushed back her blankets. She laid her feet flat on the floor, gently to keep the old boards from creaking beneath her weight. Hands straight out in front of her as if pressing against an invisible wall, she reached. At first nothing happened. Then the air parted like paint peeled away to reveal the layers beneath. Behind her was the wall of her room, tacked with diagrams. Before her, a great open plain beneath a violet sky, contained within a flat, circular split in the air. Janalack swung her bag onto her shoulder and stepped through. 

***

Dry, warm wind, oddly gritty, nearly pushed her over as the realm-path knit closed. Waist-high, wind-flattened yellow grass rippled out in every direction, on and on until finally it vanished over the horizon. Janalack righted herself, spread her arms out to the side so the wind rushed past, tugging at her clothes. Had she longer hair, it would have danced behind her. She breathed in deep the air of this strange world, and then she settled cross-legged onto the ground to make her notes.

The _Guide to the Foreign Realms_ had been written nearly a century earlier by a curmudgeonly old woman who was not herself a realm-walker but who had a great talent for tracking down those who were and, through sheer persistence, extracting their stories. Her prose could not be described as inspiring, and indeed her work was of little interest to anyone but realm-walkers, and even then, only those with the patience to crawl through it. Janalack had uncovered a copy a the bookshop in Kemataral, the village nearest her family’s estate. Nayonen, who made pennies from her work as an apprentice clockmaker, had purchased it for her seventh birthday. Janalack had devoured it cover-to-cover in the span of two days. 

For this reason she recognized the place where she now found herself: it was the easiest to reach of the realms connected to her home-world, the one where most realm-walkers landed on their first trip. After that it became more complicated: stronger realm-walkers crossed space in great swathes, from one realm to the next where another might take a detour of a half-dozen realms or more. 

The _Guide_ held no maps, nor any indication at all of the realm’s topography besides a rough list of where past walkers had begun their journey in the home-world and where they had landed — this being, universally, in the great grassy expanse where Janalack sat, chewing her lip as she studied the book. She had less than a rudimentary understanding of map-making but imagined it could not be especially difficult. Now, lacking in the materials for it — or what she imagined were the materials for it — she would mark only the place of her arrival. 

She knelt to pluck bare a circle in the plain. The grass stems were hard and hollow at the base, narrow and flexible higher up, where they bled sticky sap over her fingers when she broke through the surface. Grasses covered much of the countries in the north and east of her home-world, or so she had read. Cepan’s tropical climate favoured expansive creepers and great flowering bushes; and so it was grasses, for all their lack of bright colours or interesting flowers, that she had taken to pressing between the blank pages of her notebook, and now she added another. 

***

Soon her fingers ached, stained yellow at the nails, scratched from the sharp edges of the leaves. She’d left a bald spot the size of a dinner plate in the plain, revealing brown, crumbly soil, faintly moist though she could see no source of water, not even budding clouds in the sky. A handful of the dirt she slipped into the pocket of her raincoat. 

To her disappointment she’d found no insects, these being, in her estimation, the best part of any exploration: Cassinat always discovered the treefrogs, and the snakes, and a beautiful yellow-striped spider the size of Janalack’s hands cupped together — this last one had come to an unfortunate end, crushed beneath an encyclopedia; Janalack had held a proper funeral where she forced Cassinat to confess to her crime, then spent the following two weeks refusing to speak with her — but smaller insects she smuggled home in her pockets and built homes in glass bottles she hid in the closet or under the bed in face of her sister’s approaching footsteps. No insects from this realm or any other would fall to Cassinat’s wrath, she vowed. She would build them an impregnable fortress, with soil and plants from their home, and Janalack would watch over them and record everything they did in the proper scholarly fashion. But first she would need to find some. 

Blinking against the harsh sunlight, she emerged from her reverie as her body listed to the side. Her eyes stung with exhaustion, but she could not sleep yet, not when there were maps to make and insects to find and sunsets to watch. A scholar did not sleep until her work was done, nor give in to petty bodily urges. All of this she thought firmly to herself as she lay down in the grass, just so she could watch the sky. Nothing more than that. 

***

She dreamed of giants tap-dancing over endless yellow fields and woke to a lightening lilac sky, a sticky feeling in her throat. Slivers of grass barbed her clothes. A stalk dangled from her hair into her eyes; she flicked it away. The realm seemed very lonely, all of a sudden, eerily quiet without the wind that had died while she slept. Painfully, she swallowed a slice of dried mango, wishing she had water. Perhaps it was time to go home. Cassinat might even still be asleep. She reached for the realm path — and found a multitude. The air peeled away before her to reveal a vast expanse of rock, something glimmering and white drifting down over it. Snow. Janalack stretched out her hand only to pull it back at the touch of biting cold. Homesickness forgotten, she layered on her spare clothes. 

Snow sunk into her shoes and stung against her face. She tilted her head up to catch it in her mouth, shovelled it up in great handfuls, eyes watering from cold. Then she pushed away layers of snow with the side of her shoe, knelt to scrape up the hard, pebbly dirt beneath, and put it in the empty pocket of her raincoat. 

She picked her way through the snow towards an outcropping a little ways away. Each step broke through the thin crust of ice that formed the top layer of the drifts, soaking her to her knees. Her hands tingled then numbed; warmth leeched out even as she bunched them into fists tucked up into her sleeves. The outcropping loomed suddenly before her and she sank gratefully to her knees, body already aching with the effort of pushing through snow. Crouched in her makeshift shelter, she looked out, for the first time, on the world. 

Jagged mountains pierced a slate-grey sky. In the valley, dusky green trees the shape of ballroom skirts bowed beneath the snow. She would have drawn it all, if she could — if her fingers were not so numb, if she could translate all that she saw around her into marks of a pen rather than formless scribbles. With one last longing look and another mouthful of snow, she split the air once more. 

***

Janalack lay on her back in a land of hard-packed sand, notebook held open above her, head pillowed on her bag. Her map showed a half-dozen realms, crossed in she could not say how many days. She had slept four times, eaten all but the final crumbs of her rations. Her bag frayed where it shouldn’t have for years yet; the leather being of good quality and well-stitched. Threads unraveled from her clothes as she walked, leaving behind a trail that soon vanished behind her. 

She closed her eyes, and reached. The realm paths tingled beyond her fingertips. Now she sensed subtly different textures to them, enough to distinguish between them but not to know what hid beyond, nor to tell for certain which she had already tried. 

The first was familiar: a vast expanse of blue rock, smelling faintly of spice — she had opened this pathway before, but it was not the one she came from. Then a single tree, bowed branches sweeping down to red dirt. A new realm. She added it to her map with shaky fingers. Sweat beaded at her forehead. Chest aching, she opened another. She would have cried, had she any tears left, but her body had become a dried, shrivelled thing. Black spots danced before her eyes but she would not sleep here, not another night. 

Blindly, desperately, she reached. Cold air knocked her back. She opened her eyes to snowflakes wide as her thumbnail swirling down over a sheer mountain face. Shaky with relief, she stumbled through the realm-way to collapse in a white drift. 

Curled on her side, she chewed snow until her stomach ached from it, until her insides shivered and tears carved frozen paths down her cheeks. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Already snow covered her like a blanket. Soon she would be buried entirely. She’d played at being buried, back home, deep in the pages of the _Guide to the Foreign Realms_ and enamoured with the idea of snow; cut up the old linens to make flakes and made Tavi stand on the table to drop them over her, only there hadn’t been enough to dig a burrow. 

Janalack shot upright. Numb fingers plunged blindly into the nearest drift, scooping out armfuls of snow. She forced herself into the space, curled tight with her hands tucked beneath her arms. The realm paths danced on the edge of her awareness, but she could not reach them. Slowly the cold receded to a dull ache. Soon she would find her way home. She only needed to regain her strength. 

***

Sleep eluded her: a heavy, sick pit sat in her stomach, and when the feeling came back to her fingers, she could focus on nothing but the bone-deep cold. She wished her mother were there, or her father, to scold her and carry her home like they had when she fell from the ketazin tree, or Cassinat with her lessons, Nayonen with her sharp tongue or Tavi with his silences. But they could not come to her, so she would come to them. 

She focused on the feel of the realm paths: a trace of warmth here, the scent of soil after rain, the sting of sand blown against skin. Lungs aching with cold, she breathed in. And out. And in. And pushed. A fracture split the air. Wavered, contracted, then grew, wide enough to see the expansive field of grass beyond, endless beneath a purple sky. Janalack crawled towards it on hands and knees, dragging her bag by the strap. The gap was barely wide enough to fit her shoulders. 

At first the heat burned: fire prickled through her arms and legs, then down into her fingers and toes. She stripped off her damp outer layers and lay there on her back, stretched out beneath the sun to soak up its warmth. There, she slept. 

***

When Janalack Nabaran returned to her own realm, the sprawl of mud-brick villas and towering, wide-leafed vetavi trees assured her she was, at least, in the correct country, though she did not recognize the village. She stood at the edge of an open-air market, deserted until the scorching midday heat died away into the afternoon. She regarded it curiously: Cepanese winters were seldom truly cold, tending instead towards a rainy coolness that allowed the markets to remain open throughout the day. It was not until mid-spring or even the start of summer that the heat grew truly intense. 

Already she felt dried out and dizzy from the sun. Tucking herself into the shadow of a merchant’s cart, she flipped through her notes. These had suffered towards the end of her journey, at first smudgy and illegible, then absent entirely. She filled in the gaps hesitantly: the hours blurred together, details slipping away like sand through her fingers. Someday she would return, better supplied, to make her observations properly. 

Her stomach squeezed with hunger, a familiar feeling after the last few days and not one she had means to fix, even when the market reopened — merchants were not well inclined towards charity and beggars rarely humoured when they stopped by one’s door. All the same, she set off towards the cluster of low-slung houses across the square. Halfway, she spotted a young bird laying limp in the ruddy dirt, orange-speckled wings askew, eyes wide open and cloudy. Janalack settled on the ground, cross-legged. Gently, she cupped it in her hands. 

At five years old, Janalack had found a frog in her family’s garden: a tiny thing, barely the length of her smallest finger, morning light reflected off the deep, blue-speckled black of its skin. She had sat, motionless, waiting for it to move, until finally Nayonen found her there and told her it was dead. Death had been a strange, murky concept to her then, something that resided in books she read under the table when her tutors and schoolteachers paused for breath, not as an end but as the condition that allowed for dissection and the consequent revealing of the body’s secrets. 

The cook left his knives out in a row on the counter when he cooked. Janalack stole the smallest, a paring knife the length of her palm, as he prepared the noon meal. At first she could not cut the frog’s skin: it dipped beneath the pressure and she pushed down until all of a sudden it broke and the blade plunged down, slicing through organs. The books said she needed a scalpel to make incisions fine enough not to damage anything beneath. Her parents would not buy it for her, nor even Nayonen, who liked to put what little she had by way of independent wealth to use in blatant disobedience of their parents. The markets had ornamental knives, blades dull but carved with elegant designs. In the end, she’d made do with her stolen paring knife. 

It was this knife she now fished from the depths of her bag and set neatly beside her. First she plucked away the feathers on the bird’s chest. Then she collected them together and tucked them into the lower pocket of her raincoat, with the dirt from the first realm. The wings she pinned in place with loose pebbles, stretched out to either side of the bird’s body. She pressed the knife-tip gently into the bare skin. 

“Did you kill it?” The speaker was a woman older than anyone Janalack had ever seen before, bent deep over a walking stick clenched in wide, knobbly hands. 

“No,” said Janalack. She poked her tongue between her front teeth in concentration as the bird’s flesh parted beneath her knife. 

“Have you ever cut into a person?” 

Janalack shook her head. “I only dissect what I find dead, and I’ve never found a dead person. My sister says the constables take them away, and you can’t have them back afterwards, unless they know you’re family, and also an adult.” 

“Would you like to?” asked the old woman. 

“Yes,” said Janalack, then, “do you have one? A dead person, I mean. Can you teach me how to do dissection on them? The books only have instructions for frogs, and I tried asking the butchers but they wouldn’t tell me.” 

The old woman’s stick snapped out, lightening fast, to crack her on the knuckles. “Stop that, child. I do not have some poor soul for you to chop up for your little games, and I am getting tired of watching you torment that bird.” 

“The bird is dead,” said Janalack, rubbing her stinging knuckles. 

“And you shall respect it,” said the old woman. 

“But it’s dead,” said Janalack, who, despite her father’s best efforts, struggled to understand how dissection was not respectful — she thought it would be very exciting if someone cut her open to find out how she worked when she died, and told the old woman so. 

“It is your parents’ role to teach you such things,” said the old woman. She cast a critical eye around the square, as though noticing for the first time Janalack was unaccompanied. “Where do you live? I will tell them of your behaviour.” Janalack shrugged. Ordinarily she would have argued, but at the present moment she wanted very much to see her family again and did not especially care if that meant a thorough scolding. 

“Kemataral,” she said. 

The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “That’s reaches from here.” 

“I took the realm paths,” said Janalack. “Only I got lost and ended up here instead of back home.” 

The old woman heaved a great sigh. “I suppose you expect me to do something about it,” she said. 

“No.” Janalack crouched down to flick a fly off the bird’s corpse. “I’m going to take the realm paths, once I have more food and water.” 

But the woman had already caught hold of her wrist and began tugging her. “A great inconvenience, going all the way out to Kemataral. That’s five days of walking. You had best make yourself useful.” 

“I don’t think it’s five days by the realm paths,” said Janalack. “If you aren’t lost, I mean. Which I won’t be, because I made a map.” 

They reached a small mud-brick house at the edge of the market. 

“What’s your name, child?” asked the old woman as she pushed Janalack inside. Out of the sun, the temperature dropped to a more comfortable level. 

“Janalack Nabaran.” When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw the house comprised a single room, sparsely furnished but for the crates packed against the back wall. 

“Minor nobility, then. I would have thought they would keep better track of their children.” 

“I try very hard not to be kept track of, so really it isn’t their fault,” said Janalack. Talk of her parents reminded her of their insistence on proper manners. She added, “what is your name?” 

“You may call me Viratel.” 

Viratel had her draw water from the well at the centre of the village to fill a wooden tub. When Janalack was sufficiently free of dirt, she was fed a bowl of cold broth and put to sleep on a narrow cot shoved between two of the stacks of crates while Viratel scrubbed and mended her clothes. At dawn, she was shaken awake to load the crates into a long, flat-bottomed cart drawn by a rusting bicycle. For all she stooped and creaked, Viratel lifted the crates as if they weighed no more than a particularly cumbersome book, while Janalack panted and sweated and got shouted at for not being careful enough. Not allowed on the cart or the bicycle, she walked alongside as they departed the village. Viratel seemed to have lost interest in her; taking on an expression of vague surprise whenever she came into view. They did not stop at all on the first day, except for the occasional sip of water or bite of food. At nightfall, they camped on the side of the road. 

***

The next morning, Viratel left the cart at the roadside— she did not seem especially concerned about this, though the guard posts set up along the trade routes had not done away with banditry — and led Janalack into the thicket of vetavi trees. 

“Do you know what this is?” she tapped her stick on the ground beside a gnarled, spiny, black-wooded bush, the leaves narrow and orange. 

“Dog Leaf,” said Janalack. 

“Good. And this?” Viratel tapped another plant, this one vibrant green. 

“No.” 

“Emeraldwood. When the roots are ground and mixed with Dog Leaf, it forms a tonic to lower fever. Consume too much and the body cools to the point of death.” She lowered herself painstakingly to the ground. “Come. I will show you to harvest it.” 

Janalack knelt in the dirt. Under Viratel’s watchful eye, she brushed soil from the roots of the emeraldwood, then cut through the fibrous root a finger-length from the base, far enough along that it would do the plant no permanent damage. Viratel handed her a waxed drawstring bag and she placed the sample inside. 

“What do you know of the gods?” asked the old woman as they moved on to the next plant. 

“There aren’t any, except in stories from the east,” said Janalack. Above her, Viratel shook her head. 

“A shameful thing, how they teach you children, to imagine erasing the gods from memory would rob them of their power. No, girl, they are real. Our months bear their names. Our new year dawns on the day of their fall.” She handed Janalack another bag. “Would you hear a tale?” 

“Is it supposed to teach me a moral?” asked Janalack. “My sister always tries to teach me morals.” 

The corner of Viratel’s mouth twisted upwards at that. “Every tale has a moral, if you seek it.” She settled herself onto a tree root, stick laid out on the ground in front of her. “It is said the Traveler found this world, crossing the realm paths, and that the eight others followed after, criminals and outcasts one and all, driven from a home long lost. It is said the Traveler discovered humans — for the gods did not create us, though some stories will tell you it was so — and the gods refashioned themselves to look as humans look, and to walk among us, and it was like this they gained power, first as tyrants, then as deities. 

“It was the gods who formed our seasons — once, the weather did not change with the dawn of the new month. And it was the gods who brought about their own downfall, for it was they who taught us war, fashioning human armies into weapons in their petty squabbles. 

“It is said that when the gods were toppled, damned to be reborn human lifetime after lifetime, to live without memory of what they once were and to die together on the anniversary of their fall, the power shorn from them formed the tresset, and that is why all the children born in that time hold a gift.” 

“I was born in the tresset,” said Janalack. “Does that mean I’m part god

“It means your curiosity may doom you as it did the Traveler.” 

***

The streets of Kemataral were thick with activity. Viratel had bid her farewell to set up a stall in the market square, while Janalack took the long way through the town, which was uncommonly busy for the time of year; ordinarily the winter rains — strangely absent during her journey — turned the roads to soupy mush and kept visitors sparse through the winter. 

Occasionally she caught one of the locals watching her intently. She shrugged it off on the basis she had been gone some days longer than usual; her parents might have been asking after her, a prospect that filled her with dread. At least if they banished her to her room they could not stop her opening the realm paths, though probably she would not be able to gather supplies to go properly exploring again. Maybe she could use them to get to the market square so Viratel could teach her more before she left. 

The vetavi trees thickened as she climbed the winding road to her family’s estate, a construction of burnished wood overlooking the village. Soon she veered off into the press of vetavi trees that made it seem the house was alone in an oasis, rather than one of several on the ridge. It was only a few minutes’ walk through the forest from one house to the next, but Nayonen said the adults all liked to the take the long way on the road so they could pretend their property was bigger. 

Janalack emerged from the forest at the back of the house, by the door to the kitchen: in his better moods, the cook let her wash up using his sink. Her mother must have scared away the serving boy while she was gone because she did not recognize the girl who opened the door when she knocked. 

“If you’re here to apply for a position, I’m afraid we aren’t hiring,” she said. Janalack held out her hand to press her palm against the girl’s in greeting.

“My name is Janalack. I live here, but I was out adventuring when you were hired. Can I use the sink?” 

The girl gaped. “Wait here,” she said, and took off running. 

Janalack came inside to find the kitchen empty of the cook, who usually spent mornings at the market. She washed her face and arms in the deep-basined sink used for cleaning the dishes and washing clothes, sluicing off a thick layer of dust. 

Behind her, someone made a noise like air being squeezed from a bag, and then she was swept off the ground and crushed against someone’s chest and her mother’s voice was murmuring, “Darling, darling, you’re _safe_ ,” over and over and over. Janalack squirmed against her. 

“Mother, it wasn’t even that dangerous,” she said. Finally Saranac lowered her to the floor. She was thinner than Janalack remembered, cheekbones sharp against her skin and eyes sunken. 

“You were gone nearly half a year. We thought you dead.” 

And then she started to cry, silently, tears snaking down her face to drip onto the kitchen floor. Janalack froze, uncertain, her initial spark of excitement at learning time in the realm paths did not match with time in her own realm dampened by the shock of seeing her mother cry — ordinarily Saranac expressed her disapproval at the first hint of tears from any of her children, and certainly did not engage in such displays herself. Janalack patted her on the elbow. Probably she should say something, but she did not know what. 

Later, she vowed, she would find a pair of pocket watches and she would measure time in the other realms against time at home and calculate how they differed so she could go adventuring as long as she liked without anyone ever noticing she was gone. Now she stood with her weeping mother in the kitchen of her home with an uncomfortable feeling in her chest, newly burdened with the knowledge she could cause her mother such pain as to make her weep. 

***

Miraculously, Janalack had not received even so much as a scolding over her latest adventure. Her mother had bundled her upstairs, where the rest of the family, looking somewhat careworn but otherwise no different than when she had left, circled around to express their teary amazement. 

“I’m sorry,” cried Cassinat, Janalack’s face cupped between her palms. “I should have been watching, I was supposed to be watching.” 

“Don’t feel bad,” said Janalack.

“You must have been so afraid,” said her father. 

“I wasn’t,” said Janalack. In the comfort of her home, fed and watered and surrounded by family, desperation and hunger and bone-deep cold softened to something wild and exciting, like something out of Nayonen’s adventure stories, and she was eager to return the moment she found a pair of working pocket watches. 

Currently Nayonen stood with her back against the wall, arms crossed, a ferocious scowl upon her face. Tavi was nowhere to be seen; he’d enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug then stomped out of the room, a transgression that went curiously overlooked. 

“Can I go read now?” she asked. Her mother and father locked eyes above her head. Reya rested a warm hand on her head, then after a moment nodded.

To her surprise, her side of the room remained exactly as she had left it, books piled on the floor and clothes strewn across the end of her bed — Cassinat ordinarily spent a great deal of time telling her to clean and then moving all of her things around anyway when Janalack failed to put them in the places Cassinat thought they should go. 

“We worried you were never coming back,” said Cassinat in a tone that suggested this was an explanation, though Janalack was not sure how. 

“Do you have a pocket watch?” she asked, settling cross-legged onto her bed to rewrite her notes, this time cross-referenced with the _Guide to the Foreign Realms_. 

“Why do you need it?” asked Cassinat. 

Janalack poked her tongue between her front teeth as she copied her map onto a fresh sheet of paper, leaving space for new discoveries. “I’m going to measure how time passes on the realm paths,” she said. 

The map had turned out crooked but usable. Probably she would need to make a new one later anyway, once she found enough new realms. 

“Then I won’t give it to you,” said Cassinat. 

“How come?” 

Cassinat went quiet for so long Janalack thought she had forgotten the question. Finally, she said, “Why don’t you want to stay here? Mother and father treat us well. We have education, food, opportunities.” 

“It’s boring,” said Janalack. “You can’t learn anything properly sitting at home.” 

“We worry for you,” said Cassinat. “Every time you leave, we worry you won’t come back.” 

Janalack shrugged. “Eventually you’ll realize it isn’t dangerous.” 

“Or you will realize that it is, and when you do, it will be too late.” 

***

Janalack was restless. No one would lend her a pocket watch, not even the cook or the new serving girl, because Cassinat told them why she wanted it, so all she got was seven lectures on the dangers of adventuring. She had not officially been forbidden from leaving the house, but whenever she made a move even in the general direction of the front door someone appeared suddenly at her shoulder with some task that happened to take place indoors. Even when they pretended to leave her alone, she caught them watching. 

“It is no secret that she was tresset-born,” said Reya that evening, perched on the edge of Janalack’s bed after she feigned sleep. 

“I don’t want attention drawn to it,” said Saranac. The bed dipped by Janalack’s feet as she sat. “Nor do I want it thought I cannot keep control of my own daughter. We have precious little status to lose.” 

“Once you told me such things did not matter. That we would not raise our children as you were raised by your parents.” 

“I was young and foolish,” said Saranac. 

“I will not have my daughter be part of a conspiracy,” said Reya. “Besides, she has no talent at deception.” A moment of quiet, during which callused fingers brushed over her cheek. “She may need to return to school with the children in the year below.” 

“That won’t be necessary,” said Saranac. “She is intelligent enough, for all she insists on disobedience.” 

“It is from you, that stubbornness,” said Reya. Saranac laughed, lightly; the mattress shifted as they stood. 

Once their footsteps had faded down the hall, Janalack climbed out of bed. She crept across the room, footsteps careful on the old wood, and slowly pushed open the window, wincing each time it creaked. She had one foot outside when it occurred to her to leave a note, which she leaned back to scrawl on the nearest scrap of paper. 

A vetavi tree stood an arm’s length from her bedroom window. Sitting forward on the sill, she latched her arms and legs around the nearest branch, then swung her feet down so that the tips of her toes came to rest on the thickest part of the branch below. She crouched. Hands gripping the smooth wood, she dropped, dangled a body-height from the ground, and let herself fall onto soft soil. 

With hours left before the noon heat, the market presented a thick mess of humanity, merchants crying their wares beneath bright awnings as shoppers squeezed through overcrowded isles. Janalack bounced excitedly on her toes: her parents never let her in the market, though Nayonen sometimes brought her when they came into town together. She plunged in. 

Viratel sat at her cart at the edge of the market, where the crowds were not so thick, glass jars glittering in the sun. The air smelled of fruit and sugar from the vendor adjacent, who sold tarts. 

“Will I never be rid of you?” asked Viratel when she spotted Janalack. 

“I was adventuring in the realm paths for half a year,” said Janalack, eager to have someone to tell who would not go quiet and sour at the subject. “It was the month of the Thief when I left, but now it’s the month of the Soldier. Can I borrow your watch?” 

“If you work for it.” Viratel gestured towards a crate beneath her table. “Go on. There are jars that need labelling.” 

Janalack settled herself on the dusty ground at Viratel’s feet, carefully tracing out labels in her neatest letters before she attached them to the bottles with twine. Viratel spoke as she worked, on the function of tonics but also on the gods, in their lives as humans and as deities. She talked as the sun set and as Janalack ran out of glass bottles and instead sat silent to listen, pausing only when a customer came to the table — for all she refused to cry her wares her business did not suffer. There they remined until the stars climbed high in the sky, and as they towed the cart to Viratel’s rented room at the edge of the market square she pressed her watch into Janalack’s palm. 

“I need two,” said Janalack. 

“Then you must work until you have earned another.” 

***

On her third day with Viratel, Janalack returned from the forest with a bundle of herbs tied with twine and a beetle cupped in her hand to find her parents standing at the stall, out of place in their sweeping court clothes and elaborate hair. Janalack stopped beyond their line of sight, chewing her lip. It occurred to her suddenly that she had not been home in days, having spent her nights curled in a plush chair in Viratel’s room and her days at the market. She did not think they had call to be angry — she had, after all, left a note — but doubted her parents were of the same opinion. 

“I returned your daughter. It is no fault of mine if she does not wish to stay returned,” said Viratel as Janalack edged closer. 

“She is a seven-year-old child, she cannot make her own decisions,” said Reya. 

“I _can_ ,” protested Janalack, to be met with no more than a cursory glance. 

“Then you will be pleased to know she is not making her own decisions. She follows my directions well enough, and cheaply, too — there are few pairs of hands I could hire for the price of a watch,” said Viratel. 

“Must we pay for her return? Is that the way of it?” asked Saranac. Without waiting for an answer, she took Janalack by the wrist and slapped her pocket watch into her palm hard enough to sting. “There. Have I purchased your affection?” She towed her away, wrist aching, herbs still clutched in her left hand, pocket watch in her right. 

***

The window in her bedroom had been padlocked. Janalack would have asked why — she could creep through the rest of the house well enough when need be, not to mention no lock could stop her accessing the realm paths —, only her mother had been bright-eyed and trembling by the time they reached the estate, and she had pushed Janalack inside so hard she stumbled. She had stared down at her daughter with some unreadable expression for a long moment, mouth flexing as if fixing to speak. In the end she slammed the door without a word, the thump of her footsteps reverberating through the wood as she strode away. 

Janalack bit her lip, eyes welling with tears. She marched across the room, deliberately hitting every creaky board, and threw herself face-down on her bed. Everyone was so angry with her and she could not understand why — she had not _meant_ to be gone half a year, and all she had done since her return was try to keep it from happening again except no one would _let_ her. 

Only she didn’t need permission, because now she had privacy and two pocket watches. Janalack sat up, tears dried and forgotten. Fingers trembling with excitement, she set her notebook on the corner of the bed, then checked the watches were set to precisely the same time. She opened a path to the first realm, the one with the purple sky, checked once more the watches were synchronized, then balanced Viratel’s watch upright in the grass. 

When a minute had passed in her own realm, she took back the other watch to record the time — half a minute more had passed. She tried again, now measuring by the time on the watch in the other realm. Once she had completed the trial a third time, she stepped through the realm path to find a circle of stubbly grass where she had picked the plain clear, now grown back to half the height of the grass surrounding it. Where exhaustion and dehydration had dulled her senses when last she had visited, now she felt a half-dozen realms beyond her fingertips. Janalack settled cross-legged in the grass and got to work. 

***

No one would speak to her the next morning. She had woken late but contented, her realm-map filled with new details and annotated with time differentials. Her experiment had cost her no more than half an hour in her own realm, short enough that she was cautiously optimistic her absence had gone unnoticed. 

She skipped downstairs for breakfast to find Cassinat hurrying Nayonen and Tavi out the door for apprenticeship and school, respectively. She had fixed Janalack with a strange expression, not unlike the one she wore when the theater companies came to play tragedies in the town square. Tavi and Nayonen stared fixedly in the opposite direction, and in the end Cassinat had ushered them outside without so much as a word. 

Saranac and Reya were not so important by the standards of nobility as to attend court daily; they sat together at the table with a late breakfast arrayed between them. Both turned towards Janalack as she entered. The room fell to silence as their eyes fixed on hers. Her father turned away first, an unusual hardness to his expression, and resumed the conversation as if there had never been an interruption. 

Janalack seated herself at the end of the table, a strange, empty feeling in her stomach that did not go away with what little food she forced past the lump in her throat. Eyes stinging, she slunk away, down to the garden then through the forest, hardly noticing where her feet carried her until she found herself in the morning bustle of the market, staring at the empty spot where Viratel’s cart should have been. 

“Where did she go?” asked Janalack to the vendor in the spot adjacent.

“On to Talaket, or so she told me last night. I gather stopping in Kemataral was not in her original plan.” 

If Viratel was traveling she would already be reaches from the village, preferring, as merchants often did, to set out before the sun had truly risen. Janalack could never hope to catch up to her following the same road, though she knew which one led to Talaket. 

Instead, she opened a realm-path. Craning her neck, she spotted the shorn circle in the grass a handful of feet to her left — so left corresponded with the direction of her family’s estate and the direction opposite the road to Talaket. She turned away, walked forwards three arm-spans, then re-opened the realm-path to find herself at the edge of the village, slightly off the main road. Good. She edged to the side until the realm-path opened directly over the road, then sealed it closed and set off in as close to a straight line as she could manage. 

***

The sun had begun to set in her home realm when she spotted Viratel’s cart at the side of the road, the old woman resting beside it. Janalack’s legs trembled with exhaustion as she stepped from tall plains to hard-packed dirt, scratched and prodded by fragments of grass that clung to her clothes. 

Viratel glanced up at her, corners of her mouth twitching upwards. “Truly, girl, is there no getting rid of you?” She handed Janalack a waterskin and a skewer fresh from the fire. “You had best be willing to work your keep.”


	2. Of Factory Towns and Orphan Children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quality of this one's a bit inconsistent but I got tired of trying to fix it, so it's just going to be like this. Sorry guys. 
> 
> CW: parental death, child homelessness, mention of past child abuse and neglect.

_One winter, in the time that is now the Month of the Turncoat, the Artist found a boy who was dead. In this life the Artist was a man in his prime: in these days he saw beauty in youth and emulated it well — he observed the human form, and so his body was skillfully crafted, all delicate wrinkles around the eyes and thick hair and eyes of polished black._

_All the same the Artist did not seem precisely human, when you looked at him too long, for he was still young, as these things go, and did not have very much practice. He lived in a port city that does not exist anymore, in the country that is now Vistoral, and had done for nearly twenty years — as time passed he added to the work of art that was his body, so that although the townspeople thought him odd, it was only in the ordinary way._

_The Artist loved humanity the way one loves a rare flower, or the rain. He lived among them in palaces and in shacks, in parks and brothels and holds of ships, loved them when they were sick and when they were healthy, as new babes and as elders with creaky bones and as everything in between, but he did not very well understand them._

_In these days he slept on the ground in an alley, wrapped up in a shaggy old coat to protect from the cold. And cross from him slept a little boy, who had been there all day without moving, and the night before, too. His brown skin was waxy grey and he stared, unblinking._

_“Hello,” said the Artist. The boy said nothing, and when the Artist reached out to touch him, his skin was cold, same as the night air. And so the Artist draped the boy in his coat, and sat next to him on the frost-hardened ground, and drew a picture with fingers that never grew cold or stiff. He folded it up and tucked it into the pocket of the coat, for mirrors were rare in those days, and it was a great gift to see oneself as others did. After a time he went away._

_When he came back the boy was still there, but the coat was gone, and the drawing. and the Artist thought that the boy had been innocent, and those who had taken his coat cruel, and that such cruelty must be wiped away like chalk from slate. Thus the Artist became the Judge._

**Month of the Turncoat, 809**  
Snow had settled on Cenneten city early in the month of the Thief and not let up all through the winter, so that by the final days of the month of the Turncoat a thick crust of sooty ice webbed between the concrete and brick of the factory district, climbing higher and higher with every fall. In the far north of this maze stood a boarding house listing gently to the side, original colour long since hidden by a thick paste of grey that was never entirely cleared away, even with the worst of the spring rains. High, narrow windows lined the walls; the rooms here were draughty, those on the inside, against the communal kitchen at the centre of each floor, were warm but windowless. It was in one of the former that Breneder Miredo lay in bed beside his mother as she died. 

Once she had been a farm girl, come to the city in her youth as slowly the war stole away her family, brothers and sisters and cousins gone to the front or to the cities as year by year more of their grain vanished into the royal coffers. Still her origins showed in her bones, in how she dwarfed her city-born colleagues, in the slow, halting way she puzzled over writing, in the country dialect that coloured her voice. Her mother had named her Kerra, not yet three decades past, cradled to her chest in the dirt-floored home where she died sixteen years later, alone but for her youngest daughter. After the funeral Kerra had packed her bags and come to Cenneten. There she had birthed a son, alone but for the fragile new life in her arms as wind screamed through cracks in the wood, and it was in the same bed that she would die, six years later. 

She lifted a hand, brushed it heavily over her son’s hair, wire-straight ordinarily but now tangled from lack of brushing. He stared at her as one would a strange creature, for it seemed to him something had stolen into his mother’s skin, had turned it from dusky brown to papery grey, had leeched away her strength until she could do no more than shuffle to the washroom at the end of the hall, pausing every few steps to suck in air through blue-tinged lips, one hand braced heavily on Breneder’s shoulder for balance. She would not eat: bowls of watery soup littered the ground by the bed. She smelled odd, her usual, comforting scent of soap and metallic factory air worn away to something sickly. 

“When are you going back to work, mama?” he asked, for until a week past Kerra had woken every day before the sun to work in a towering brick factory three blocks down, where she sewed uniforms for the army. Some days Breneder sat in her lap and sorted the buttons. Others he stayed home alone, under strict instruction never to open the door to anyone. 

He could not have said how many days had passed since she had last gone to the factory — the light that filtered in through the high window hardly changed; with the sky heavy with snow clouds and soot, the city existed perpetually in lantern-light. Also he did not know his numbers well, for all Kerra sometimes took it into her head to teach him. She carded her fingers through Breneder’s hair, cold and clumsy. 

“I’m not going to get better, baby.” 

Breneder said nothing. He wanted to pull away from this thing in his mother’s skin, to demand it return her to him, only he was afraid if he did they would both be gone forever. He would rather have this strange facsimile than nothing at all. 

“Please get better, mama.” 

He felt something strange and warm spark in his chest as he said it, a certainty greater than any he had ever felt that his words made it so. Kerra’s breath caught and stuttered, eyes drifting shut. She let out a slow breath. Then, laboriously, she rolled on her side to face him. 

She said, “listen to me, baby, this is very important.” The words stole her breath, air whistling thinly out as she struggled to regain it. “You can do something special, because you were born in the tresset.” Her eyes drifted closed. “Very special. But you can’t use it. Not ever.” Another pause, so long Breneder thought she had drifted to sleep. She slept often these days, tired to the bone by every scrap of movement. “When you talk you can force people to do things. You need to promise never to do it again.” 

“Then will you get better?” asked Breneder.

“No, baby. Nothing is going to make me better. But you need to promise anyway.” 

“Okay.” 

***

Breneder stood in his bedclothes in the kitchen, a narrow, rectangular room with cupboards covering two of the walls in their entirety — each apartment was assigned one to store their food. Those who paid extra could use the cold-box. Standing on his toes, Breneder could just barely see inside his and Kerra’s cupboard to see a single turnip, slightly wrinkled with age. He poured water from the pitcher by the sink to wash it — tap water carried diseases and needed to be boiled —, then cut it into chunks, washed the knife, and put it back where he had found it. 

The knives and pots and pans and plates and cups all belonged to the boarding house, and whenever something got stolen or broken everyone had to pay extra on their rent for it to be replaced. For this reason Breneder was very careful as he filled a pot with water from the pitcher and placed it on the stove, arms stretched above his head to reach, then lit it with a match scrounged from one of the kitchen drawers. 

There were burn scars all along the tips of his fingers from when he’d first learned to do it, perched on the counter with his legs dangling into the air, Kerra standing firm and calm before him. At first he could never get them to light, and then when he did he was afraid of how the flames shot up from the stove and could not bring himself to let go until the flame had crawled all the way down the wood to lap at his fingertips. Kerra had dried his tears and dipped his fingers in water and made him try again and again and again until he got it perfect. Back then she worked at the munitions factory, which paid better than sewing uniforms but was too dangerous to bring Breneder along, so sometimes she would be gone days at a time and he needed to cook and boil water for himself. 

When he judged enough time had passed for the turnips to go soft, he heaved up the pot with both hands and poured the contents into a bowl. Hot water splashed down onto his bare feet and he hissed but did not flinch — pink scald marks decorated his body from all the times this had happened before. 

Pot clean and bowl cradled between his hands, he made his way slowly back to the apartment, pausing every few steps to let the ripples settle. He placed it on the carpet as he wrestled open the door, the frame warped crooked with age. His home consisted of a single room, floor and walls or worn wood. It had come with a closet and a bed and a wing-backed chair with a loose leg where they piled the clothes that needed a wash. The walls were plastered with Breneder’s drawings, done on the backs of bills and newspapers and whatever scraps his mother could find. Kerra still lay on her side, eyes closed. When Breneder leaned down to wake her, her skin was cool to the touch, though she wore all her clothes in layers and every blanket they owned besides. 

“Mama, I brought soup.” 

She did not wake then, nor in the hours that followed. After a time, Breneder ate the soup himself, cross-legged against the wall. It tasted of soggy turnips. 

“Do you want the rest?” he asked, but Kerra did not answer. She had a strange, shiny look to her now, waxy pale except her hands and feet which were swollen and purple. Breneder did not want to be near her like this; instead he sat by the door, casting anxious glances in her direction every few seconds in case she woke and missed him. 

He finished the soup and went to the kitchen to clean the bowl and put it away. He went back to the apartment and dozed on the floor. He woke, checked on his mother — her pallor was worse, her limbs stiff when he tucked the covers more securely around her —, ate the mush from another soup bowl, curled on the floor with his arms wrapped around his stomach when it sent sharp cramps through his body, woke and checked on his mother and went to the kitchen to clean the bowl and put it away and lay down on the floor and slept. 

Kerra had gotten bigger, some time in the night, all puffy and bloated, skin flexing under Breneder’s hand. Also she smelled bad; an inescapable stink that filled every corner of the apartment. Breneder mixed soap and water and wiped her down with a washcloth, eyes fixed on the wall instead of on Kerra, but it made no difference. Afterwards he sat on the floor. When his mother still worked at the munitions factory, she bought him a set of paints. He’d used them careful and slow, so it was only now, near two years later, that he was close to running out. He took one of the scraps of paper from the wall and on the blank side he began to draw his mother, not as she was but as she had been. 

Someone knocked at the door. 

“Mama,” he whispered, but still she didn’t wake. Breneder chewed his lip. He was not allowed to answer the door when he was alone and wondered if this counted. A key scratched in the lock. Only Kerra and the landlady had keys to the apartment, and Breneder, though on this he had been sworn to secrecy. He curled up under the bed.

The landlady’s polished black shoes appeared in the doorway and stayed there. Two pairs of legs came into the room, dressed in matching charcoal grey pants, neatly ironed and pleated. Breneder pushed himself farther back. Constables. 

“I swear I get assigned the worst ones on purpose,” said one of the constables. She came to stand by the bed, close enough that Breneder could have reached out and touched her shoes. 

“Natural causes, looks like,” said the second, joining the first at the bed. “Shame. It’s been a while since we had a good murder.” 

“No murders in my house,” said the landlady, sharply. 

“Do you want the feet or the head?” asked the first. 

“Feet,” said the second. They laid out a thick, dark-coloured cloth sheet on the ground, tied closed at the ends. They lowered Kerra onto it, tying it closed with practiced deftness. 

“She has a son,” said the landlady. 

“Must have left,” said the second constable. 

“Another gutter rat for the cells,” said the first. “Chances are we’ll be seeing him in a couple of days, months if he’s lucky. Rare these ones turn out well.” 

They hoisted the bag into the air. The landlady locked the apartment door behind them. 

He slept on the floor by the bed, ready to tuck himself away at the first hint of footsteps. The room still smelt of old soup and his mother’s illness. Frigid air seeped in through the wall, burrowed down through his skin and settled in his bones as he huddled, locked in place, arms wrapped around his knees. 

When he could not stand it any longer he went to the washroom at the end of the hall, where three metal bathtubs sat in a row, separated by filmy white curtains. Scalding hot water poured from the tap, quickly cooling to tepid. It warmed him all the same, until he was no longer shivering and had begun to drowse, calmed by the quiet, everyday sounds of the boarding house.

Feeling better than he had in days, he dried off and dressed, made a half-hearted attempt to tame the snarl of his hair. Maybe his mother had returned. Maybe the constables had taken her away to heal her — she warned him to be careful around them because sometimes they took people in the factory quarters for no reason at all when the Chief Constable said they weren’t making enough arrests, but also she told him it was their job to help. He skipped down the hall, damp towel tucked under one arm. 

The landlady stood in the open doorway to their room, adjusting the cloth tied over her mouth and nose. She wore her sleeves rolled to the elbows, tucked over long grey gloves. Their bedsheets sat in a heap at her feet, to which whatever odds and ends remained in the closet were soon added: the dress Kerra only wore on festival days, a couple of threadbare shirts from when Breneder was a baby they used as rags — like his mother, Breneder had layered on his clothes to ward off the cold. 

Now he backed away, stumbling over his feet. The landlady turned towards him and for a long moment their eyes met. A thin woman, face permanently pinched in pain: she had worked at the same munitions factory as Kerra, a very long time ago; there she had broken her left arm all the way from the shoulder to the hand, so badly they had to take off three fingers and the arm healed crooked. She loomed over him, dark eyes narrowed. 

“There will be new tenants clamouring for this room by day’s end, smell or no. You can’t stay here,” she said. She spoke the city dialect with a faint trace of the country accent she and Kerra shared, along with the straight, dark hair hardly anyone had outside the farmlands of western Taltha. 

“The workhouse will take you. It’s a hard life, but a kinder the streets.” 

The workhouse was a looming construction of grey cinderblock not far from the boarding house, where the children sewed clothes during the day and slept in rows on the floor at night. Breneder had stayed there two weeks after Kerra was hurt at the munitions factory — she wouldn’t tell him what happened, but there was a long scar down her leg where the doctors had cut her open to fix it. He’d snuck out with food every night because she couldn’t work until she recovered. The matron had beaten him with her belt, the one time he was caught, but only the one time, because after that Kerra was well enough to make uniforms and Breneder came back to live with her. 

He looked up at the landlady. “Okay.” Then he slunk off down the hall, arms wrapped tight around his chest. 

***

A building five storeys in height and nearing half a century in age surely held a great number of nooks and crevasses where a young boy, large for his age but small nonetheless, might hide. Breneder knew none of them. Journeys from the sanctum that was his apartment were rare and timid; in his mind the boarding house counted only the kitchen, the washroom, and the front entrance beyond its confines. 

Now, for the first time, he wandered. The halls all looked very much the same, thin brown carpeting between rows of wooden doors no different from his own except for the nailed-on steel numbers. Skittish feet carried him onwards, inched back at every creak of a door. He thought of nothing as he walked, allowed the building to swallow him whole, the way he had done when his mother was gone for hours or days, just sat and let himself drift. 

After a time he found himself in the kitchen, curled up by the stove. Someone must have used it not long before he came in; the heat of the metal seeped through his clothes, nearly hot enough to burn. Wedged between the stove and the floor-to-ceiling cupboards he was invisible unless someone looked at him straight on. Breneder turned so his back was to the warmth of the stove, chin resting on his knees. The white paint on the cupboards was peeling, the pale green of the last paint job showing through, under that rusty red and then bare wood. 

***

Hunger crept up on him slowly, grew and grew until it left behind nothing but lethargy and a sick, hollow ache. No one had come in to eat yet — it must have been night. He inched out of his hiding spot, stiff-limbed, and opened the nearest cupboard. It held three carrots, an apple, and a burlap sack that sounded like it held dried beans when he shook it. Breneder ate one of the carrots. Then he ate the second, and the third, and the apple after it. 

“I told you to get out.” 

The landlady seized him by the back of the shirt with her good hand. She marched him to the door, tugged it open, and pushed him outside. It was a moonless night, lit by torches and too cold for fresh snow. The earlier fall had been packed down to icy corridors between the drifts. He edged along the path towards the factory where his mother worked. 

Even before dawn the windows glowed with light. Uniformed workers filed in for the day shift while others filed out, heading for home. Kerra was not among them. Breneder followed the workers inside to a vast room of brushed concrete lined with long tables. The floor supervisor — a thin, wild-haired city boy a decade Breneder’s senior — spotted him from where he paced between the tables and hurried over. 

“Miredo! Tell your mother not to come back. She has no job here anymore.” 

Breneder froze, as he did around all adults who were not his mother. In a rush of panic, he asked, “can I work here?” 

“Agreement with the workhouse is they get everyone younger than twelve.” So he went back out into the night. 

***

At first he clung close by the boarding house, tucked away between wood and snow, watching the dark, curling blot of smoke rising from factory chimneys. Kerra had told him of the stars, once, as he lay in bed burning with fever; how as a child on a moonless night she could not see her hand held before her face, but when she looked up at the sky the stars stretched endlessly on, greater in number than even the best of scholars could hope to count. For weeks afterwards, he had drawn nothing else. 

Now he dug through the snow, sleeves pulled down over his bare hands, pushing away the soot-stained crust to find pockets where it was fresh and white. He scooped it up, sprinkled the clean flakes over the dark surface. With a bared fingertip he traced a flower, and another beside it so it wouldn’t be lonely, and then some more, small flowers for the children and large for the adults, and they were all friends and loved each other and never got sick and disappeared. By the end his fingers had gone numb, his legs heading in the same direction. With a last glance back at the boarding house, he stood and walked away.

An abandoned building stood not far away, legacy of Cenneten’s rapid expansion from a measly farm town boasting a tavern, a schoolhouse, and a handful of one-bedroom houses built around a brushed dirt square that served as a market when the farmers came in with the harvest to trade, to a sprawling maze of concrete and brick, built under the exigencies of near three decades of war. 

Breneder edged inside. The air tasted stale, the concrete floor bare but for silt tracked in on muddy shoes and scuff marks where the machines had once been. A pile of detritus lay in one corner, lightly scorched, beside it a box of matches, nearly empty. Legs already numb from cold, he knelt, broke off three long pieces of charcoal, and lit the fire on his second try; the first match he had snapped in half, stiff-fingered. As the fire returned warmth to his limbs, he brushed clear a space on the floor, chose a piece of charcoal, and drew. 

Pain exploded in his ribs. Breneder jerked awake, gasping, tears building in his eyes. The battered leather toe of a boot struck out towards him and he curled away from it, arms wrapped around his head. The blow struck his forearm with bruising force and Breneder scrambled away, concrete stripping the flesh from his palms. Somehow he regained his feet, breathing hard. A fist caught him on the shoulder; he swayed back but did not stumble. For the first time he caught sight of his attackers: three children near his own age but shorter by the span of a hand, bony, feral creatures with wind-chapped skin and hungry eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasped out. “I didn’t know it was yours, I’ll leave.” 

“Did you hear that? He doesn’t know it’s ours. Must not have marked it up good enough. Better leave him as a warning for the rest,” said the nearest, a girl her hair tied in tails at the sides of her head. 

She drew back her fist. Panicked, Breneder kicked out, catching her in the knee. She jerked back with a hiss. Breneder met her eyes, wounds throbbing, heartbeat fluttering against his ribs. Something warm and hard hit from the side. The world tilted. His head hit concrete and bounced. Black dots exploded over his vision. He struck out blindly, hit flesh. Somehow he ended up back on his feet. Hands clawed at him, scratched into his skin, but he felt no pain. His fingers were tangled in someone’s hair, his fists bruising against someone’s skin. 

And then, sudden as it began, it was over. Breneder sank to his knees, bleeding from the temple, aching all over. By the day’s end, he would be covered with bruises. Pain lanced through his body with every slight movement. The other three children slumped across from him, scratched and bruised and bleeding but altogether sporting less damage. 

“Good fight,” said the leader. “We could use you.” 

Breneder looked away. “Mama says I can’t talk to people like you.” 

The leader laughed. “If you’re out here, your mama’s dead and gone, or else she doesn’t want you anymore. You are people like us.” 

“That’s not true,” said Breneder. 

The leader shrugged. “It’s almost the tresset. You’ll change your mind when the hail starts.” 

“My mama will be back by then,” said Breneder. 

“Just go.” 

Outside, he watched a worker hang a string of paper flowers in the window, stomach tight and ribs throbbing. Usually he liked Asuv — the noble houses sent food and drink to their factories to celebrate the first day of the tresset and gave everyone the fourth day off for the new year. Kerra used to sleep all through the morning that day; it was the only time she didn’t need to wake early. She would be back by then. Probably she was finding a new job now and they would have the feast at her new work. Breneder sat down in the snow some distance from the abandoned warehouse. At least the cold eased his aches. 

***

The day had been calm in the way they often were before the tresset: warm, though not so much as to melt the snow, patches of blue sky showing through a smog of ash. Breneder spent the day wandering. So long as he kept moving, the cold was not especially bothersome. 

He watched as the snow was cleared from the factory entrances, long tables placed on the frozen dirt. As the sky went dusky pink with the setting sun, they were set with platters of meat and fruit, cauldrons of soup placed over cookfires. The night shifts arrived in festival clothes to take over while the day shift when home to change. In dresses and suits they huddled around the fires, raincapes draped over shoulders or tucked beneath arms. There was a feeling of cheer to it all, a tolerance for the cold now it was almost over: Asuv would bring rain and hail and sleet, but afterwards it would be spring. 

As the sky darkened, a motley band of musicians gathered under the awning as the tables were cleared then carried inside. When the festival was over the extra food would be packed into containers and carried home, where it would feed the workers and their families for days or weeks to come. Some time later they emerged to sit cross-legged on the ground facing the musicians, a group formed by the colleagues among them who had access to an instrument: a man with a lute and one with a fiddle, two women with drums. 

They began to play, slowly at first, discordant, then faster, in leaping, weaving notes. The cold of the ground faded away with the oily taste of night air, leaving behind nothing but music. Time passed in a surreal blur punctuated by moments of abrupt clarity, a sudden, too-sharp awareness of _here_ , of the snow against his body and night air against his face, of the soft, worn-out fabric of his clothes and the weight of the layers. Then it faded, sound dying out so silence fell precisely at the midpoint between dusk and dawn. 

Breneder stood with the rest. The sky rumbled with the gathering of storm clouds. As one, the workers raised interlocked hands to the sky. Taking the rain, it was called, for always the tresset began with rain or sleet or snow. Now it poured down in a freezing slush of ice and water that soaked through his clothes in seconds. Silently, the workers lowered their hands, split off in twos and threes to their homes, unspeaking until dawn in deference to the power of the tresset. Breneder waited until everyone had gone, then picked his way over the icy trail back to the boarding house. 

He stood in front of the door, shivering, icy slush dripping off the side of his face. Upstairs he would find his mother in their room, healthy and smiling. She would wrap him in her arms and tell him she was sorry, the way she used to when she was gone all day at the factory. She would explain everything and it would all make sense and soon enough it would be no more than a bad memory. Breneder chewed his lip. The door loomed over him. Maybe he should give her more time — she could not get their room back from the landlady until dawn, after all, and besides Breneder would forget to keep silent when he saw her and ruin the start of Asuv for them both. So he settled at the side of the building, arms wrapped around his legs, refusing to entertain his nagging doubts.

***

Dawn brought lightning and a sheet of freezing rain so thick the world past the end of his outstretched arm vanished. Shadowy figures moved up and down the street, spreading gravel in their raincapes. All at once the downpour eased to a warm drizzle. Rain had cleared the smog from the air, revealing the dense blue-black of storm clouds, tinged with green. Breneder’s legs trembled when he stood, limbs stiff and numb. He stared at the closed door of the boarding house. It wasn’t so cold. He could spend the day outside, give Kerra time to sort things with the landlady, who never made concessions easily. Besides it was daytime. Kerra was never home in daytime, except when she was sick, and surely she was not sick any longer. He could check the factories to see if she had a new job, he told himself firmly. 

Instead he found himself inside, though he could not remember commanding his limbs to bring him there. Mud crusted the carpet in the entranceway and across the lobby to the staircase. The building was heated only enough to keep the pipes unfrozen, but the warmth was a relief all the same. 

In the kitchen, he stood on his toes to check the cupboard and found it full, packed with bread and vegetables and glass jars of spiced walnut paste: festival foods, distributed and carried home after the first rain. Something in Breneder’s chest loosened. He tore off a chunk of bread and devoured it, huddled on the counter. Once he began to eat his hunger only grew, a dormant ache suddenly flaring to life. He tore off another chunk of bread, then a handful of crab apples and two strips of dried meat tied together with twine. His mother would forgive him the indulgence. 

He found the apartment empty. There were new sheets on the bed, new clothes in the closet. His art supplies were all gone, along with Kerra’s work uniforms, but that made sense — the landlady had taken away all their old things; his mother must have been gone replacing them. Now she would be at work. Breneder stripped off his wet clothes, draped himself in a soft linen shirt that came down to his feet, tucked himself into the blankets, and slept. 

***

Someone was having great difficulty with the door — not his mother, for she had lived in this apartment so long it had become second nature to compensate for the odd shape of the frame; nor the landlady, who knew her rooms just as well. Breneder sat up, blanket wrapped around his shoulders to ward off the lingering chill. Maybe Kerra had found someone to share their apartment and help pay rent, the way she had before Breneder was born. The door opened. Cautious, he crept closer. 

A woman and a man stood on the threshold, some years older than Kerra and dressed in the formless beige the factories tended to favour as uniforms. Breneder edged back, arms wrapped tight over his chest, eyes on the floor. He did not want two adult strangers in his home. He made to slam the door closed but the woman caught it, stepping forward over the threshold. 

“What have you taken?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” mumbled Breneder, shrinking away. 

She caught him by the arm, sharp nails digging into skin. “What have you taken?”

Rain pounded hard past the wooden walls, water seeping in through the cracks. Suddenly he could not bear the thought of another day outdoors. “Please,” he said. “Please, let me stay. I haven’t taken anything, I promise.” 

The woman’s fingers loosened, then dropped. Beside her the man swayed, blinking dazedly. He lifted Breneder beneath the arms and set him on the bed, wrapped the sheets around his shoulders once more. There Breneder stayed, unmoving, watching as the pair gathered their clothes and left. They returned some time later with damp hair, dressed for sleep. The woman folded a jacket for Breneder to use as a pillow. She and the man climbed in the opposite side of the bed, so their feet were down by his face. She blew out the candle. 

Breneder could not sleep. He lay frozen in place, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling as the dim light that filtered through the cracks in the wall grew slowly brighter. The man slept restlessly. He woke all at once near dawn; snapped upright on his elbows and stayed there, staring Breneder in the eye until the boy lay down flat, eyes clamped shut, feigning sleep. 

A whispered conversation, too low for Breneder to hear, then the bed dipped as the adults climbed out. The scuff of shoes on wood, a heavy _thump-click_ as the lock ground open, the scrape of a door pulled free from a poorly fit frame. It was only after their footsteps had faded into the distance that Breneder allowed himself to relax — it would be hours yet before they returned. 

***

Rough hands shook him awake, lifting him from the bed. He thrashed, vision filled by a strange, hard face in a constable’s uniform. The man and the woman stood huddled in the doorway as if in fear of some great monster. His feet dangled in the air, bare and brushed blue with cold, speckled with tears that dripped unnoticed from his chin. Desperately he gasped for air, choking on terror wrapped like vines around his limbs, freezing him in place. He hung there, suspended in the constable’s bruising grip, for seconds stretched into an eternity. 

And then his back slammed hard into the wall, and he cried out, new bruises layering over old. He wanted it to be over, to wake with his mother at his side, to follow her through the cold and the snow and sit at her feet as she sewed, only now he was sure he couldn’t, for Kerra would not allow anyone to treat him like this, not ever. He began to cry in earnest, then, great heaving sobs that scraped past his teeth, because his mother was gone, forever. 

The constable’s hands were on his wrists now, wrapping something tight around them so they pressed together. Through the blur of his tears he saw it was rope, though it glittered strangely, glowing magenta studded through the cord, scraping like gravel on his skin. Weakness stole through him all at once, on its tail a horrible empty ache all through his body, worse than any fever. He struggled, desperate to get away, to free his hands. He reached for the warm thing in his chest, even though it was a betrayal, even though he had promised, only there was nothing but a great gaping hole. 

“Move,” growled the constable, but he could not; all the strength had gone from his body. Instead he sunk to the floor, dizzy from crying and unable to stop. 

The constable had dragged him by the collar, stumbling over slick ice to a low brick building at the edge of the factory district. Breneder stared blankly as they passed through the door, exhausted and numb, soaked through with sleet. It was loud in here, and warm. They passed desks, then doorways; the constable tucked him under an arm, digging into his ribs as he descended an echoey staircase. At the bottom was a bright, cluttered room with a metal table at the centre, upon which the constable set him. A hatchet-faced woman with her hair in border-braids came to peer at his face, then down at the rope binding his wrists. 

“That’s really glowing. What’s his gift?” 

“Brainwashing, apparently. Couple who came in earlier said he broke into their apartment and forced them to let him stay. It wore off while they were sleeping.” 

“Dangerous, then. We’ll put it down as high-level.” She rummaged through a drawer, emerged with a milky white stone hung from a simple cord, which she draped over his neck. “It’s jail time for you if you take it off, or use your tresset gift on anyone — it glows when you do that. Name?” 

“Breneder Miredo,” he whispered. 

“We got a Kerra Miredo through here a few days ago, recently deceased. That’d be your mother?” A nod. “Any other parents? Aunts, uncles, grandparents?” He shook his head. “Age?” 

“Six.” 

She checked his eyes and his mouth, then prodded at his body. “A bit bruised up, but nothing that’ll stop him working. Put him with the kids for the workhouse — they won’t be happy about his gift, but the law says they’ve got to take him.” She unwound the rope, handed it back to the constable. The sick feeling faded, leaving only grief. 

***

There were ten or fifteen other children in the cell, near Breneder’s age all, grubby and scowling. They eyed the pendant with open hostility but did not dare approach. The three children from the warehouse were there as well, afforded a clear space around them; they circled methodically away whenever Breneder moved to approach. Finally he curled himself into the corner, arms clamped around his knees. 

For all he worried it would be hours or days before they were moved, his clothes had not yet dried when a pair of constables opened the cell a crack and called them through one at a time. Each was bound securely by the wrists when they came forward, until they formed a long chain in the hallway. One constable at the front and one at the back, they marched from the building, through ice-patched streets sprayed with gravel. No one said a word. 

They stopped on the street before the workhouse, staring up at the towering concrete face pocked with narrow, barred windows. For many it had been home in the past and would be again in the future, for days or weeks or years at a time until the novelty of warmth and regular meals was no longer enough to blunt the long, tireless days of work or the harsh punishments or the vicious words of the other children, and they escaped once more to the streets to begin the cycle anew.


	3. The General's Parade

_When the war was at its height and the Monarch who had been the Soldier ruled all of what is now Taltha and Evato and some of Vistoral, too, the Farmer, who was allied with the Monarch, went to walk among the people._   
_The rains had fled nearly a year past; in the time since even the hardy summer grasses ceased to grow. Dead stems crackled beneath her feet as she walked, sun baking on her dark skin. Sod homes stood as bumps against the horizon, sunken in. Without the grass as protection, they would collapse under the weight of the rain, if ever it returned._   
_“We have no food here, and no water,” said the first man she met on the road, skin cracked like leather beneath his straw hat. “It’s all dead this way.”_   
_And it was. Everywhere she went, the Farmer found nought but dry fields and dry wells. Some welcomed her into their homes, though they had nothing to offer but miseries shared, and for that kindness she did what she could: she had not the power to bring rain, but when she laid her hands on the parched earth she found some faraway spark of life and coaxed it gently awake like a mother rousing a sleeping child. At every home she did what she could, and it was not very much, but it was enough for worship._

**Month of the Bard, 812**

Perched on the edge of a garden box, dirt beneath their fingers, weeds strewn at their feet, four children the messenger pick his way up the path towards the house. The youngest, a girl by the name of Oreani, began to wander and was scooped absently into the arms of the second-eldest, a boy of bright smiles and wild, deep brown curls — she had learned to walk, recently, and proved active in her newfound freedom. 

“What do you think it is?” asked the boy, eyes still fixed on the messenger as his young cousin squirmed in his lap. 

“It’s a messenger, Calrey,” said the eldest, Calrey’s brother Luco, who had a square jaw and a faint wisp of a mustache in which he took unwarranted pride. “Come on, let’s go see.” 

They fished the elder of their cousins from the corner of the box where she had been playing. Calrey wiped ineffectively at the mud streaked across her face with the corner of his sleeve. 

With an exasperated sigh, Luco lifted her onto his shoulders. “Elien is three years old, Cal. No one cares if she’s muddy.” He set off down the garden path, his younger brother trailing behind as Oreani squirmed and tugged at his hair. By the the time he caught up, Luco had collected the letter from the messenger. 

“It’s from Uncle Ghallan,” he said. He moved to open the envelope but Calrey snatched it away. 

“You can’t. It’s for Mama Marta and Papa Osmin.” 

“How do you know? You can’t even read,” said Luco. 

“I can!” protested Calrey. “Plus he never sends letters to anyone else.” Oreani caught the corner of the letter and began chewing it; he extracted it from her grip. They continued on. 

The house sat at the top of a gentle incline, two storeys plus cellar of faded wood overlooking the family’s fields, though in truth they belonged to Lord Edesket, whose sigil above the door marked his ownership of the house and fields both. The top floor on the far side showed a strip of glossy black where hung the funeral plaques for all in the household who had died since it had been established. This close to the harvest the house was quiet, empty but for the three elders and Mama Danla, who had birthed twins four months earlier and now slept on the patchwork sofa with them asleep at her side. In the kitchen they found the elders seated around the table, skinning potatoes for dinner. 

“We got a letter from Uncle Ghallan,” said Calrey, quietly so as not to wake the twins. 

Granna Tenned wiped her hands clean on her apron and stood to take it. In her youth she had won the village wrestling competition every year for a decade, and even now, with hair more grey than black and wrinkles creasing her eyes, she was built like an ox and strong enough to carry a full-grown coat beneath each arm. She slit open the letter with her life, read it, then passed it over for Granda Stephanet and Granna Lizket to read. Her expression had gone tight and unhappy, as it often did when Uncle Ghallan wrote. 

Noticing the children were still there, she said, “Luco, you take the girls and get back to work. Calrey, fetch Martanna and Osmin.” 

***

More than any of his other siblings, Papa Osmin took after his mother: broad and tall, dark eyes watching the world from beneath heavy brows. He had been the eldest of the household’s children in his time, as Luco was now, but Calrey could not imagine him caring for his younger cousins and siblings as Luco and Calrey did theirs — his features knew neither anger nor joy, no sadness or fear or hurt or pride; he could not picture him as a child with tears in his eyes over a scraped knee or with stains on his clothes. 

Calrey slowed as he came near, trying in vain to comb down his unruly hair with his fingers, stumbling over his feet as he tried to tuck in his shirt and walk at the same time. 

“Papa Osmin, Granna Tenned wants you and Mama Marta to come to the house because you got a letter from Uncle Ghallan.” 

Mama Marta jogged over. A borderlander by origin, she was thin-faced and wiry, skin a few shades darker than the mid-brown common in the eastern farmlands, tight curls spilling down over her shoulders. She grinned at Calrey, leaned forward to rest her arms on the top of his head. 

“Let’s go, then.” She snatched up Osmin’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “Train tickets won’t give us a problem unless we stay ‘til the end of the harvest.” 

“You can’t leave during the harvest,” protested Calrey. 

Mama Marta reached back to ruffle his hair. “Sometimes you need a small sacrifice to make a big change.” 

“What change? I thought you’re going to visit Uncle Ghallan.” 

“Uncle Ghallan is trying to make right something that has been wrong for a very, very long time,” said Mama Marta. “When we visit, we help him do that.” 

“I want to help, too,” said Calrey. 

Mama Marta’s mouth flicked up at the corner. “Maybe you can.” They had reached the house. She released Papa Osmin’s hand to bound up the steps to where Granna Tenned stood waiting by the door. “Mail for us, I hear.” She glanced back at Calrey. “Off you go.” 

He moved to return to the vegetable patch when he caught a flicker of movement out the corner of his eye: Luco peeked out from around the corner of the house, finger to his lips, waving Calrey over. He looped around the house to join his brother under the open kitchen window. 

Inside, Granna Tenned said, “a moment of privacy, please?” 

“We’ll help Danla settle the kids upstairs,” said Granda Stephanet. 

Hidden by the tangle of bushes, Calrey peered through the open window. Marta and Osmin stood on one side of the kitchen, letter held between them, Tenned on the other, arms crossed. 

“Best hurry with whatever it is you want to talk about — we’ll need to take the evening carriage from Miro tonight to have a chance of getting there in time,” said Marta. 

Tenned’s scowl only deepened. “When you chose to birth and raise Luco and Calrey here, you made a commitment to this household,” she said. 

“We still hold to it,” said Osmin. 

“You both have been gone weeks or months at a time. When Luco was young, he called you aunt and uncle.” 

“I love this family, and I will always be grateful for what you have done for my brother and me, and for my children,” said Marta. Her accent, usually faint, grew stronger as she spoke. “But what we are doing with Ghallan is greater than all that. It is a matter of justice, of righting ancient wrongs.” 

“You want war, no different than the one the Kalliders wage against Evato.” Tenned’s mouth was set in a hard line. Marta stepped towards her, cautious at first, then bolder, taking her hands in her own. 

“Luco is thirteen years old. If he applies he might be granted an exception, but the fact remains that on his fourteenth birthday he will be of an age to be drafted into the military. The fact remains that when the tax collectors come, it is peasant children who starve, and that our children will never have a proper education, that they have been purposefully groomed to be fit only for the farm or the factory, never to work in law or government or medicine. I see the tragedy in that, even if you do not.” 

“Fine,” bit out Tenned. “Go, then. Catch your carriage.” 

“We’re bringing the children,” said Marta. 

“No.” 

“Martanna…” said Osmin. 

“We are bringing the children,” repeated Marta. “Luco and Calrey, at least. They need to see the world past the village. Besides, they’re our blood. You have no say in this.” 

“They belong to the household,” said Tenned. “They belong to Jenda and Kevince and Danla and all the others as much as they do you. If you wanted it otherwise, you should have raised them in Lanadara.” 

“I want them to be able to choose. I want them — all of the children, Elien and Oreani and Rinn and Evlyn, when they’re old enough to get anything from it — to see more of the world than Miro and decide for themselves before conscription decides for them and their introduction to real life is watching some soldier’s brains get blown out beside them. If they want to live out their lives here or die in the army, they’re welcome to it. I just want them to see the world needs changing, for themselves and for the children in the cities and even for the Evatans.” 

Tenned sighed. She pulled her hands from Marta’s grip, set them on the table. For a long moment, no one spoke. 

“Mother,” said Osmin. He sounded hesitant, faintly pleading. 

“You are too much of an idealist, daughter of mine,” said Tenned. “Fine. Go in safety and in luck.” 

***

Two weeks later, they arrived in the Talthan capital of Lanadara. Calrey had been intermittently tearful and excited since their hurried goodbyes, missing the children and worried over who would care for them with the grown-ups occupied with the coming harvest, not to mention the rest of the household from whom he had never been separated more than a handful of days. The carriage from Miro brought them to Ciet Acobansiz on the evening of the second day. At first Calrey thought it must be the capital: built into the face of a towering, rocky hill, surrounded by glimmering stone walls, it could have held the village of Miro a hundred times over or more. Compared to Lanadara, it was barely a village. 

The train ride from Ciet Acobansiz to Lanadara lasted eleven days. Calrey and Luco spent the first running up and down the car and sticking their heads out the open window to watch as the prairie sped by, gradually transforming into forest, but in the cheap section with nowhere to sleep but hard wood benches, the novelty wore off quickly. Nor did the train line connect the two directly — there were days they spent hiking narrow, winding trails or sharing a packed carriage with irritable strangers, nights spent camping under the stars while bugs crawled through their hair. 

Some distance from Lanadara, the track had dipped underground, so that the final hours of their journey were spent in the dark, sound drowned out by the rattle of the wheels until eventually it came to a halt at a long wooden platform where men and women in outfits of crisp green came up and down the train, asking for papers. By then Calrey had grown used to this aspect of train travel — the demand had been repeated at every stop since they boarded outside Acobansiz. They filed off the train to climb a steep, lantern-lit staircase, pressed to one side to make room for the travelers heading in the opposite direction. People dressed strangely in the city, in bright-coloured, billowing sleeves over dark buttoned or laced vests that reached from throat to mid-thigh — once or twice they passed someone dressed in the same rough-spun shirts and trousers as Calrey and his family, muscular where the rest were hollow-cheeked, and their eyes met in fleeting solidarity. 

They emerged into a circular room ringed in arches, marble floor worn to dusty brown from wear. Above, the domed ceiling a bright mosaic patterned with the silhouetted footprints that were the Traveler’s sigil. Traffic moved through in a circle, people peeling off when they reached the proper archway. Osmin took his children by the hand as they joined the press. Circling the perimeter of the room, they stepped through the largest of the archways onto the street beyond. Men and women in vests and puffed sleeves streamed past, eyes fixed ahead. Buildings of brick and stone, four or five storeys in height, stretched the length of the street, porches and balconies casting it in shade. At a distance, towering marble walls peeked over the skyline. 

“I wasn’t sure you would be here in time.” The speaker — a man early in his twenties — looked and sounded a city boy, dark curls worn long and tied back in a tail, puffed sleeves rolled to his elbows to reveal ink stained hands. Still there was something familiar in his heavy brows and square jaw. 

With a grin, Marta surged forwards to wrap him in her arms. “Ghallan! We haven’t missed it, then?” 

“Not yet, but we need to get moving or that will change.” He glanced down at Calrey and Luco. When he next spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. “You brought the children?” Then, brighter, “look how big you are! I don’t think I’ve seen you since you were babies.” 

“They can’t live their whole lives on the farm, no matter how much Tenned wants them to,” said Marta. Moving away from the building, they were swept up by the crowd. 

“She give you a lot of trouble?” asked Ghallan as they pressed in tight with a multitude of indifferent strangers. 

“Less than I thought. Are we meeting up with the others?” 

Ghallan shook his head. “Later. The constables have been keeping a closer eye — likely they’re just worried because of the parade, but it pays to be careful.” 

“Are we in danger?” asked Osmin. 

“Not much more than usual,” said Ghallan. He peered over the crowd. “Come on. We can’t see anything from here.” 

He pushed through, ignoring the glares and curses shot their way. Calrey had seen crowds before, at weddings and funerals and to celebrate the tresset, but never like this; bodies all around him on every side in an impenetrable wall that knit closed behind him. He stared, wide-eyed, stumbled when he ran into someone’s back. When he looked up, his family had vanished. Panicked, he froze, searching through the mass of humanity, but they were nowhere to be seen. Someone tapped at his elbow and he turned. 

Two or three years Calrey’s junior, the girl looked like no one he had ever seen before: copper-skinned and slender, dressed in a white shirt under a shiny blue vest, where the rest of the crowd wore black or grey over green or red or yellow or orange. A white stone hung at her neck from a plain leather cord — this meant she was born in the tresset, but he could not remember which colours meant danger. All of this he noticed as background to her hair, vibrant orange-red where on everyone else he had known it was black or brown, braided and twisted up into a bun. 

“My name is Calrey,” he said. “Are you lost too?” 

The girl shook her head. “I’m Varrick. Mother says I’m not allowed in the parade because it’s only for soldiers, so I’m watching it instead.” 

“There’s a parade?” 

“That’s why everyone is here today.” Varrick grabbed him by the hand, towing him forward. “Mother’s going to be in it. She’s the youngest person ever to be made a general ever in Taltha, and maybe also in the whole world.” 

“Really?” They had come to the edge of the crowd, to a set of wooden blockades keeping the wide avenue beyond clear. Another mass of people stood on the other side, peering down the empty street. 

“They made her general because she captured Aula City. That’s the capital in Evato,” said Varrick. 

“Mama Marta and Uncle Ghallan were in the war, too, but they think it should be over.”

“That’s stupid. Evato attacked us first.” 

“It gives Mama Marta nightmares, sometimes,” said Calrey. 

“Only cowards get nightmares,” said Varrick. “I’ve been living with the army since I was born and I don’t ever get nightmares.” 

“Mama Marta isn’t a coward!” 

But Varrick was not listening. She bounced on her toes, draping her upper body over the barrier to peer down the street. “Look, it’s the parade!” 

The procession was led by a construction of glimmering bronze in the shape of a horse, long-legged and proud, striding forward unperturbed the cheering crowd. The woman riding on its back was slight of build and small of stature, muddy red hair cropped short. Strings of metal beads adorned the front of her long blue coat, stretching from shoulder to hip. Elaborate gold stitching ringed her sleeves above the elbows. 

“What’s that?” asked Calrey, pointing to the metal horse. 

“A mechane. Basically it’s a regular animal, only it’s made of metal so it doesn’t get tired or hurt. Only the army has them now, but mother says in a few years everyone will.” 

She waved at the woman on the mechane — her mother, Calrey guessed —, unperturbed when she failed to respond. Other mechanes followed behind her, some tall and elegant, others low and wide, riders all dressed in blue and strung with metal beads, though the embroidery on their sleeves was of sliver or bronze. Behind them marched foot soldiers, attired in green, the oldest among them of an age with Ghallan, the youngest within a few years of Luco. The line carried on for a long time, walking in lock-step. 

***

His hands were sore from clapping by the time the final soldiers marched past, his voice hoarse. Varrick had filled his ears with information about troop arrangements and arms and cities the Talthan army had captured. 

“I need to go now,” she said as the crowd began to disperse. She darted away down the parade avenue, unmindful of the stares that tracked her progress. Alone once more, Calrey was acutely aware of the great mass of people at his back. 

“Do not wander off.” Osmin emerged from the crowd, taking Calrey’s hand in his own. Relieved, he pressed close as they wound their way back towards Marta and Ghallan and Luco. 

“Rumour is Relle Ekanniel’s in line for the throne,” Ghallan was saying. 

“Is she even eligible?” asked Marta. 

“Tangentially. Her sister is married to Prince Andrel. It’s enough of a connection to have her legitimized into the line of succession and named heir — Ekanniel isn’t a big house; there’s no other political reason for that match and no way King Amathis would let his grandson marry for love and lose the opportunity for a political match.” 

“I served under her when she was a captain. I can’t imagine her leaving the field,” said Marta. “If she wanted to be queen, she would have married Andrel herself.”

“Amathis Kallider is old, but he isn’t sick — maybe he figures by the time he dies Ekanniel will be looking to retire,” said Ghallan. “Besides, who would turn down the job of queen?” 

“She’s twenty-four years old; he’ll be waiting a long time.” 

“And looks a decade older.” Ghallan turned down an alley, the rest trailing after him. “She has been a soldier since she was twelve years old, been badly wounded twice — the first time nearly killed her. No matter how much she likes commanding that army, soon enough her body won’t take it. Besides, she has a child to think of.” 

Marta laughed. “I don’t think she’s likely to develop a conscience about that after six years.” 

They reached a three-storey brick building with a steep staircase bolted to the side and began to climb. Ghallan pushed open a blue door on the first landing. The room inside was windowless and dimly-lit. Clocks, large and small, simple and ornate, covered every inch of the wall, set on stands and hung from the ceiling, each set to a different time. It was surprisingly deep, though narrow, the walls lined with plush chairs. 

Ghallan settled into one of the chairs, long legs stretched out. He said, “the real question is, are we better off with Relle than one of the alternatives? If Amathis dies without naming a successor, his daughter will have the throne by default, at least in theory.” 

“Ekanniel is competent, by all accounts,” said Osmin. “She may end the war.” 

“And if she can’t, she’ll drag it on until the day she dies rather than surrender,” said Marta. “Besides, you’re missing the problem. Relle Ekanniel could be the best ruler in Talthan history, but that doesn’t change the fact her successor or her successor’s successor could burn us to the ground.” 

“Why do you care? It only matters whose in charge if you’re nobility,” said Luco. 

Marta reached out to ruffle his hair; he ducked away to avoid her. “That’s why I care. Let the nobility play their games, them and the merchants — nothing good has ever come from a merchant — but let the peasants govern themselves.” 

***

As promised, a steady stream of people trickled in over the following days, most between Ghallan and Osmin in age. Calrey found himself with little to do: they were all friendly enough, in a perfunctory sort of way, pausing to ask about his schooling or his home before they gathered in tight groups, heads bent in discussion he struggled to understand. Forbidden from venturing out into the city, he often found himself alone, sent to chop vegetables in the kitchen above the clock room or mend clothes or clean. Luco did not have the same problem — he had taken to Uncle Ghallan’s friends right away, and for the most part they seemed happy to entertain him when he joined in their discussions. 

Sometimes in the evenings when he and Calrey were upstairs cleaning up after dinner, the table cleared away while the adults huddled over their empty plates, so deep into the conversation they might have stayed that way, attracting vermin, all night, Luco would try to explain, though privately Calrey was not sure he knew what he was talking about as much as he liked to pretend.

“They want the farms to be separate countries,” he said, handing him a plate to dry. “So our house and all the land we rent would be a country, and the same for all the other households.” 

“Oh,” said Calrey. He did not think this sounded like a very good idea, but Ghallan’s friends all seemed very educated, so probably they were right. 

Another time, Luco said, “they’re going to have someone regular replace the king.” 

“Like Princess Sarya or Prince Andrel?” asked Calrey. 

“No, I mean someone really regular, like Uncle Ghallan.” 

“He wants to be king?” 

“No, Calrey, do you not know what an example is?” 

Downstairs, Calrey settled into a plush chair at the far end of the room with his knitting — there had been a little wool in one of their bags and with it he had begun a pair of socks. Likely these would be too small for the twins by the time they returned home, and besides after the tresset it would be summer, but the household was young yet. Soon there would be other children for him and Luco to care for. He could tell them of a strange dark room where sometimes the tick of countless clocks slowly faded into the background, so that he only remembered it was there in the silence of the upper room. Maybe he would tell them other things, too, like how there was no place for him here, how secretly Mama Marta knew all sorts of strange, complicated words they would never hear her use, and that Luco and Papa Osmin understood what they meant, and then he would tell them not to go if anyone invited them to the city. 

A loud bang startled him from his thoughts. He looked up to find the door thrown open and a woman panting in the doorway, face flushed, straight dark hair flying loose from where she had it pinned back. She stepped into the suddenly silent room, shutting the door behind her. 

“A raid!” she gasped. “Soon. They found the flower shop. Someone must have sold us.” 

All at once the room erupted into a flurry of motion. The guests had brought gifts; books and sealed crates Calrey and Luco were strictly forbidden to touch, all hastily gathered up. Calrey found himself with a stack of tomes piled to his chin. Hand planted on his shoulder, crate tucked under her other arm, Marta steered him towards the far end of the room where Ghallan and a man with a shaggy moustache rolled back the carpet to reveal a trapdoor. Between them, they heaved it open to reveal stairs steep and poorly lit, nearly a ladder. Calrey edged down backwards, books clutched to his chest, Luco’s feet an inch from his face as he climbed down after him. Finally he hit solid ground, dark but for a square of light filtering in from the room above. 

They set everything on the floor in hasty piles. The guests settled on the crates or the floor, talking quietly amongst themselves, but Marta hurried her sons upstairs, brushing dust from their clothes and combing their hair flat with her fingers. Together they rolled the carpet back over the trapdoor. 

“We’re just a family visiting your uncle, okay? He owns this shop, no one else has been in or out except customers,” she said. 

“But the people in the basement haven’t bought anything,” said Calrey. 

Marta put her face close to his. “When you’re asked, you are going to tell them no one is here except us, otherwise we will all be in lots of trouble.” Up close her eyes were very, very dark, lit by some fierce, raging fire. He did not shy away; she was Mama Marta still, for all her fingers clasped too hard on his shoulders. Something twisted and hard took root in his stomach, tightening his throat. 

“I’ll tell them,” he said. 

***

They were still gathered at the far end of the room when a knock came at the door, sharp and insistent. 

“Sit down and act natural,” whispered Ghallan. Unhurried, he picked his way towards the door as the knocking grew more insistent. Calrey took up his knitting. Luco lifted a cup of tea from the table and stood frozen with it in his hand, uncertain. With a final glance backwards, Ghallan opened the door. Two men and a woman stood in the doorway, dressed all in grey: grey jackets over grey vests over grey shirts and grey pants. 

“Good evening to you, constables,” said Ghallan. “How may I be of assistance?” 

An iron-haired man of an age with Granna Tenned stepped forward. “I’m Senior Constable Kelsan. These are my colleagues, Constables Tarash and Ikmet. Are you the proprietor of this establishment?” 

“I am.” 

“Anyone else here, beyond who I can see in this room?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Get yourselves lined up against the wall. I want papers.” He gestured to Tarash. “Search them.” 

They lined up against the wall. Luco took Calrey’s hand and squeezed. Marta handed over their papers in a stack while Tarash moved down the line, hands patting none too gently over their bodies. Kelsan studied the papers with pointed intensity. Ikmet hung back, one hand resting on the holster at his hip. 

Kelsan stopped in front of Marta. “Martanna Vesseris, born Tamask. Rank of corporal, until a dishonourable discharge for reason of disobeying orders and striking an officer. What do you have to say to that?” 

Marta grinned, hard and flat. “Only that it was just about the proudest moment of my life.” 

Kelsan raised an eyebrow. “These your children?” 

“They are, not that it changes what I said. I know plenty of people with children, but no one else has knocked out three of Relle Ekanniel’s teeth.” 

“You admit to your offenses?” 

“I don’t seem to have much choice, seeing as it’s right there on my documents.” Marta shrugged, languid. “Of course I have some problems with that whole debacle being seen as a wrong on my part, but I won’t deny it happened.” 

Kelsan moved on. “Ghallan Vesseris. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve given us trouble.” 

“I’d say you have it backwards, you being the one intruding upon my home and place of business, not to mention a rare visit from my family, who live all the way in Miro — far and small enough you plainly have not heard of it.” 

“They must care about you a great deal to make the trip, especially with this terrible noise.” 

“One becomes used to it.” 

“And it has certain advantages, does it not? Makes it quite difficult to, say, listen in on anything being said here.” 

“I certainly wouldn’t know anything about it,” said Ghallan, smoothly. “Am I to take it the constabulary has attempted to record conversations in my shop? I’m sure we would have made an effort to be more interesting, had we known.” 

Kelsan ignored him. “And Osmin Vesseris. Exemption from military service on the grounds of essential labour, no criminal record to speak of. You find yourself in strange company.” When Osmin did not respond, he pressed on. “Enough of this. Is there a room where we can speak in private?” 

Ghallan smiled, hard-edged. “You’re welcome to the kitchen — it’s just upstairs.” 

“What’s your name, boy?” Kelsan had reached Calrey’s place in the line, second from the end, and crouched down in front of him. 

“Calrey.” 

“Very well, Calrey. Let’s have a talk, you and I.” 

***

Kelsan paused at the top of the stairs, head ducked to avoid the low, sloped roof, white paint smoke-stained from the stove. Ghallan slept on a cot at the far end of the room, everyone else on bedrolls they kept stored in the cupboards during the day. After a time, he ambled over to the table with its two mismatched chairs, motioning for Calrey to follow. There they sat, staring silently at each other. Kelsan leaned forwards, forearms on the table. 

“Do you like it here, Calrey?” 

“It’s okay. I like home better, though.” He had not paused to think on the answer and regretted it the moment it left his mouth — it seemed a betrayal to say such things to someone outside the family. “I miss the outdoors, is all, and my little cousins. Me and Luco take care of them usually.” 

“You’re not allowed outside?” 

“They say it’s dangerous, but I don’t know why.” 

“I do.” Kelsan reached across the table, gave Calrey’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Your mother, father, and uncle have gotten themselves in a bit of trouble. I can help them out, if you let me. All you need to do is answer my questions as accurately as you can.” 

“I don’t think I know anything,” said Calrey. 

“That’s okay. We’ll start really easy.” Kelsan smiled, encouraging. “How about you tell me why your family is here?” 

“We’re visiting my uncle Ghallan.” 

“Do you do that often?” 

Calrey shook his head. “I’d only been as far from home as Miro until now.”

“And your parents? Was this their first visit, too?” 

Calrey shook his head. “Usually Mama Marta and Papa Osmin go a few times a year, when Uncle Ghallan sends them letters.” 

“What do they say, those letters? Do your parents seem happy to receive them.” 

“Mama Marta is. I think Papa Osmin misses home when he leaves, but they always go together.” He leaned back in his chair, tense set of his shoulders slowly relaxing. Sitting together at the table, talking, he discovered he had missed easy conversation, where he did not have to puzzle over unfamiliar words. “Sometimes it makes Granna Tenned angry, because they leave during the harvest. Granna Tenned is our head of household.” 

“Do you think there might be another reason your Granna Tenned gets angry?” asked Kelsan. 

Calrey thought on this. “Maybe she’s afraid Mama Marta won’t want to live in the household anymore.”

Kelsan smiled, indulgent. “I’m not angry you lied. It’s very brave of you to try to protect your parents. I need you to keep being brave and tell me the truth, so I can help them.” 

“But I was telling the truth,” said Calrey, suddenly uneasy in the face of Kelsan’s smiling encouragement. “We’re just visiting my uncle.” 

“What do your parents and your uncle think of the king?” 

“Uncle Ghallan says he’s old but he’s in good health so probably he will live a long time, and then Relle Ekanniel might replace him because her sister married the king’s grandson.” 

“Do they think he’s doing a good job?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Come on, now. I can only help if I know the truth.” 

“I don’t know, I promise,” said Calrey. 

“What do they talk about, your parents and your uncle?” 

“I don’t know,” repeated Calrey. “I don’t understand what it means.” At some point he had begun to cry without noticing, tears dripping silently off his face. Kelsan patted his hand. 

“I’m sure you tried your best.” He stood. “Come along. It’s time to speak with the others.” 

His family sat on the floor, backs to the wall, watching the pair of constables as they paced the room. Calrey offered a tremulous smile when they turned towards him, though his face was still damp with tears and none looked convinced. Kelsan called down from the top of the stairs for Luco to come up; he and Calrey locked eyes as they passed. Osmin reached for him when he sat, only to snatch his arm away when Tarash shook her head. 

The clocks on the wall jostled when he leaned back, digging into his skin, so he slumped forwards over his knees to stare at the wall opposite. A square piece hung at eye level, the frame of dark, reddish wood polished to gleam, the face painted with delicate, gold-feathered birds splashing in water. The second hand ticked steadily onward. 

Tarash and Ikmet paced, silent. Osmin stared fixedly ahead. Martanna stretched out her legs, feet pointed out like she was hoping the constables would trip. Her fingers drummed rhythmically against the carpet, sound drowned out by the tick of the clocks. She wore a peculiar smile, not entirely unlike the one she wore when she and Granna Tenned had the worst of their arguments. For the first time it occurred to him that Marta could hurt people — not like in the village wrestling competitions or even knocking out General Ekanniel’s teeth, but properly, the way that killed people. That she probably already had, back in the army. 

Luco stomped down the stairs and sat heavily between Calrey and Osmin. Their father stood to join Kelsan upstairs. They waited. Ghallan and Marta turned to face each other. Both looked tense. Luco could not sit still: his legs jittered, his nails picked restlessly at loose threads in the carpet. The bird clock chimed the hour with a gentle, fluttering burst of song. 

***

Calrey had drifted into a stupor by the time Osmin reappeared. He knelt before his children, glanced over at Kelsan, who had followed him down the stairs. At the senior constable’s nod, he pulled them to their feet. Luco allowed him to hold his hand, though ordinarily he was in the habit of loudly announcing he had outgrown such behaviour.

As the door closed behind them, Kelsan said, “I want every inch of this place searched.” 

“Traitor!” snarled Marta, but Osmin did not turn back. 

Outside it was bright and a touch cool, the streets bearing the mark of recent rain, though the clouds had cleared. At the top of the stairs, Osmin took a long, slow breath. No one spoke until they reached the street, where Luco pulled himself free. 

“What did you do?” Osmin reached back for his hand, snatched him by the sleeve and tugged him forward. Luco planted his feet. “What did you trade? How come Mama Marta and Uncle Ghallan aren’t here?” 

“They have business here,” said Osmin. 

Luco wormed free once more. Wordless, he turned on his heel and sprinted away. 

Osmin stared after him, tensed. “Where is the train station?” he asked Calrey. 

“I don’t know.” 

Osmin swore. This had, as far as Calrey was concerned, never happened before, but he had no time to process this strange turn of events, interrupted as it was by a stranger turn of events: Osmin lifted him into his arms — it had been a few years since he was of a size to be habitually carried. Awkward and gangly, he wrapped himself around his father as he hurried down the street. They crossed the street where they had watched the parade. The domed roof of the train station came into view. Osmin sped into a half-jog. Outside the gleaming marble building, he set Calrey on a bench. 

“Wait here for me,” he said, and then he was gone, vanished back down the street. Calrey shifted uncomfortably, damp seeping in through his clothes. People streamed in and out of the building, footsteps rapid, eyes fixed forward, never looking anyone in the face— he was invisible here, like he never would have been back home. 

Calrey did not often find himself so completely lost as he was now: at school he floundered, impatient with the closed-in walls and the painstaking deciphering of numbers and letters, but this was only a tiresome diversion from his day, something he only needed tolerate until he reached his tenth year, less than two years away now. When he looked around he saw in his family the person he would be, an adult and then an elder, a farmer and a caregiver. Watching the steady stream of people pouring through the entrance to the train station, he knew none of them, who they had been and who they would become. Luco called him stupid sometimes — he devoured ideas the way Calrey did open air, read for hours at a time under the lamplight, so he woke red-eyed and under-slept — maybe it was true or maybe not but back home it didn’t matter; books and newspapers were a rarity, nothing more than an amusing diversion. 

The sun crept steadily onwards. Calrey had indulged in a bout of brief, self-indulgent tears and had since fallen into a soothing rhythm of absent-minded people-watching. At first he did not notice Osmin coming towards him: shoulders hunched, eyes red, he looked a poor imitation of himself. In his hands was clasped a box of polished, gleaming black. Calrey had seen one like it once before, when Granna Lizket’s sister died and they had gone down to the village for the funeral. The lid to her urn had been covered in white rings, each divided into twelve sections of uneven size, representing the nine months and three tresset periods of each year; the first and last incomplete to show the time of birth and death respectively. 

Thirteen rings, the last less than a third complete, showing only the three months of spring, adorned the box Osmin held tight in his grasp. 

***

Black smoke poured past the window as the train juddered steadily onwards, away from Lanadara. Seated on a nailed-down wooden bench at the back of the cheapest car, Calrey frowned over his knitting, which Osmin had collected from the clock shop. Osmin stared down at the box, held steady in his lap. 

“An accident,” he had said, and nothing more. 

The children would not understand. Calrey did not know how to explain it to them. He would never allow any of them to leave for the city, even when they were adults and some moved away to different households. 

Voices drifted over from somewhere ahead — Oked began that night, the second tresset bringing a baking, dry wind to herald the start of summer. Osmin traced a fingertip over the final, incomplete ring on the urn’s lid, unmoving even as his second son pressed tight against his body. He would not hear of joining the festivities, and for all Calrey wished to be past this great yawning pain, to wake and find his loss faded to an old, dull ache, he had not asked again, nor moved from Osmin’s side. They would carry these memories between them: the younger kids would know Luco as a story, an ancestor to thank rather than as the brother who cared for them. 

***

The tresset had come and gone by the time they left the train at Acobansiz, eleven days later. The air was calm and still with the dawn of the month of the Soldier where earlier it had been blistering hot, wind strong enough to knock a grown man from his feet. It was evening by then, too late to catch a carriage, so they walked, stumbling in the starlit dark. 

Granna Tenned sat in the wicker rocking chair on the porch when they reached the house the next morning. Blank-faced, she took the urn, placed it gently on her chair, turned back and hit Osmin across the face. 

***

Light streamed in through the dyed canvass panels of the nine-sided structure that once had been a temple to the Farmer. Set in the packed dirt floor was a heavy stone cap engraved with fruit and legumes and wheat, piled together to form the Farmer’s sigil. The seventeen members of the Vesseris household — three elders, nine adults, and five children — squeezed into the narrow space to pry it free, revealing the endless well beneath: a dark hole in the ground, unfilled even after centuries of use. Granna Tenned removed the lid to Luco’s urn. She poured out the ashes, white-grey dust swirling down into the darkness to join the ashes of all who had died in the village and the surrounding farms before him. 

“To our ancestors and to our land we give your servant Luco Vesseris, on this land born, nurtured and nurturing in turn. May he be free in death.” 

They settled the cap back over the well. Tenned stared down at the lid of the empty urn — later it would be nailed to the outside of their house. No one spoke until they had filtered outside. 

“Congratulations,” said Papa Delow. “You have lost Luco and my sister both. When are we to hold a funeral for Martanna?” 

“She is not dead,” said Osmin. “She chose to remain in Lanadara of her own free will. When she dies, that is where her funeral will be held.” 

Delow started forward. “Do you disown her? Is that what this is?” Tenned stepped between them, one hand planted on Osmin’s chest, though he made no sign of having noticed the threat, gaze unfocused as he stared out over the fields.

“Tragedies breed tragedies, if we let them,” said Stephanet. “Will you heal this rift, or shall we commence drawing our battle lines?” 

Tenned turned away, hands dropping to her sides. “Enough. Allow this loss its place, and no more.”


	4. All Who Draw Blood: Part 1

_It was the Soldier who brought them together. He was hungry in those early days of the world, hungry in the way that the young are hungry, and with every border skirmish and every empire sending tendrils creeping outward he picked up a sword and shield and threw himself into the bloodshed. The Soldier healed quickly. The others who would be called gods clawed their way back to health by their fingernails; spent years or decades with scars fading and bones laboriously fitting back to shape, but at the height of his power the Soldier hardly bled._  
_The Soldier and the Blacksmith who would become the Inventor met first, as soldiers and blacksmiths often do. Later it would be a love story, but not yet: the blacksmith, too, was fierce and wild and alone, and as they grappled on the floor like beasts or men desperate or children fighting over a favourite toy, the Soldier began to dream of legions, armour-clad and glittering against the sun facing an enemy older and wiser and stronger: the Soldier’s own kind, however many there were, against the world. Now that would be a worthy fight._

**Month of the Soldier, 813**

At the far eastern edge of the Evatan-occupied Borderlands, a rare, peaceful quiet had fallen over the once-thriving trade town of Estamel. Drowsy in the noon sun that streamed through a fist-sized hole in the schoolhouse roof, blown open in the latest raid and not yet repaired, a dozen children copied sums from the board onto their chalkboards. A touch unkempt, perhaps, but on the whole more clean and cared-for than not. 

In the front row, Kirrow Raecovin rubbed chalk dust from her hands, dry and cracked from a morning washing out linen in boiling water to be used as bandages in the clinic. She checked over her sums, and then, confident in her work, over at Selka, who sat perched on her desk, reading the paper. By now it was three weeks old and fraying at the seams, read over and over until some outsider happened by with a newer edition. _The Battle to Reclaim Aula City Continues!_ This one proclaimed, as the papers had done every week for the past three years. 

A distant rumbling drew the class to attention. In an instant they were on their feet, crowded at the window. Kirrow followed, more slowly. Tall, thin of limb and of face, she peered over the heads of the younger children. A smear of blood sat across the high bridge of her nose; she scrubbed at it with her sleeve as the train trundled into view. Even by Evatan standards it was in poor shape, scratched and dented and marred by rust, wheels shrieking against the tracks. 

“Stay here,” said Selka. 

Crowding together for a proper view, they watched as she climbed onto the train platform, soon joined by the rest of the townspeople. The soldier who stepped out was a Midlander, pale-haired and bronze-skinned, the stitched insignia of the Evatan military plainly visible on her left sleeve though her uniform had lost its colour to mud and sun. With this suggestion of safety, the children filed out onto the street, sandy dust rising around their feet. The town’s sole doctor hurried out of the clinic, hands scrubbing tiredly at his face. Selka turned to gesture him over. 

Dorist Zenem carried with him a permanent sense of exhaustion that varied only by degrees. Now it was at a lower level, shadows rather than bruises under his eyes: their latest batch of patients had already suffered through the worst of their injuries at the field hospitals and had arrived in Estamel primarily in need of maintenance and bedrest. 

“What’s this?” he asked. 

The soldier turned towards him. “Casualties, sir, from Aula City —” 

“We have our capital back,” Selka cut in. “The siege is over.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said the soldier, clearly irritated. “Some are Talthan prisoners for the camps. We’ll keep them secure, sir, no need for you to worry.” 

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Dorist. “How many? How badly hurt?” 

“And why did you bring them three days on a train to us?” asked Selka. 

“Not my decision, sir, but my thinking is they’re all full up closer to the city, sir.” 

“How many?” repeated Dorist. 

“Fifty, sir. Patched them up as best we could on the train, but it wasn’t much.” 

Selka and Dorist, at the head of the procession, shared a tense meeting of eyes. “This is just about the whole town you see here,” said Selka. “We’ll do what we can but you have to understand it might not be much better than what you’ve already done for them.” 

“If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is, sir.” 

Dorist gestured to the children. “Go. Set up beds around the clinic. Use whatever you can.” 

It was not hard to find empty buildings: barely two block of the town were still occupied. Some had left behind furniture; in pairs they dragged away old mattresses to lay on the floor of the buildings on either side of the clinic. On the street, Kirrow dodged around the wounded, draped over shoulders or carried on stretchers, leaving blood spotted in the dust. Pausing to drag her hair away from her face, the tight frizz of curls coming lose from the scraps of string that held it in place, she watched as a pair of soldiers escorted the prisoners from the train, ten in all, at a distance indistinguishable from the Borderlanders but for the cut and colour of their uniforms. 

***

Kirrow froze in the entrance to the clinic, a bucket of fresh-boiled water hanging from one hand, bandages bundled in the other, along with a half-full bottle of iodine. The air smelled of copper and sweat. Whimpering cries in jumbled Marai and Evatan washed over her, words cut short, mired by pain. She had never seen anyone fresh from the battlefield before; until that moment, it had not occurred to her how much worse it would be. 

The soldier nearest — a Midlander of fifteen or sixteen years — was deathly pale, eyes squeezed shut, her right arm wrapped from shoulder to fingertips, fast and messy and too tight, the bandages already stained through with blood. Kirrow knelt at the girl’s side, checked the tags that hung from her neck, then began unwinding the bandages. Just shapes, she told herself. Just shapes, not blood and torn flesh and the white of bone poking through. She washed out the wounds with water then swabbed them over with iodine, as much as she could spare, wrapped the limb in fresh bandages: likely the soldier would lose the arm, but until then the risk of infection remained. She moved to the next cot. A man, badly burned, breath coming out in uneven gasps. He grabbed her by the arm when she came close, eyes flickering rapidly over her face. She cleaned his wounds and covered him in linen and tape. Picked shrapnel from a shrieking Borderlander. Wrapped bandages until her fingers ached and all she could taste was copper. 

Some time later, she could not have said how long, she stumbled outside, stiff limbed, arms caked in blood up to the elbows. The sky had gone a pinkish-grey with the coming of dusk, though the summer heat had not yet faded. For a long time she did nothing but breathe, eyes closed, back pressed to the warm brick of the clinic wall. 

Emmer Teylin, by virtue of living directly across from the clinic, had seen his home taken over by a succession of medical supplies and exhausted workers asleep on his threadbare sofas. By now past his ninetieth birthday and thoroughly deaf, he watched all of this with a perfunctory sort of irritation from his favoured armchair. He scowled at Kirrow when she slipped inside but waved her onwards to the kitchen, where she found two of her classmates presiding over a pot of thin broth. She ducked her upper body into the deep sink, watching as pink-tinged water swirled down the drain. Silently, Kel offered a bowl. She ate without tasting. 

“Wake me when it’s time to feed the patients,” she said. Then she went back into the main room and found an unoccupied chair and slept. 

***

Dark had fallen by the time Kirrow woke to distribute food, the streets lantern-lit and dark-stained. She came to the end of her rounds exhausted in a way cleaning and bandaging could never achieve: then she could get by on efficiency, could tune out the pain and the fear as she worked, but when it came to getting food and water into those same patients it became a matter of gentleness, of careful coaxing that soon eroded her patience. 

“Just eat it,” she’d snapped at a girl sobbing for her mother. “Is this how you want to die? Because you couldn’t stop crying long enough to eat?” 

The Talthan prisoners were kept away from the rest, in the building that had been a jail back when there were enough people for it to be of any use. She ladled out a portion for the half-asleep soldier standing guard outside, then went in to serve the prisoners, who had been split between three cells: five in the first, four in the second, one in the last. They were disappointingly unremarkable: Kirrow had always imagined, in some vague, unformed way, that Talthan evil would be reflected in their appearance, but although they tended taller and stockier, broad-faced and low-cheekboned, she could easily have mistaken them for Borderlanders. 

The lone prisoner in the final cell wore an orange pendant alongside her metal tags. She was wiry and long-faced, a multitude of fine braids splayed out beneath her, immobilized by the shackles at her wrists and by the bandages over her legs and stomach. Kirrow might have found her pretty, if she were not an enemy soldier. 

“How come we still haven’t won against your army when discipline is so bad they let you have long hair and jewelry?” muttered Kirrow, spooning out the last of the soup. 

Face tight with pain, the soldier levered herself up onto her elbows. “It’s not all aesthetics, little girl,” she said in Marai. Startled, Kirrow sloshed soup over the edge of the bowl onto her hands. The other prisoners spoke Taluran, a language that sounded something like the Evatan favoured in the Midlands and the far west. She had not heard any of them speak Marai, much less in a native Borderlands accent. 

Kirrow said, “I don’t know what aesthetics means.” 

“It means how things look,” said the prisoner. “I can still be good at fighting even though I have long hair. Also this pendant isn’t decoration, it tells everyone I was born in the tresset — if you look close, there’s little jewels in my shackles to make sure I can’t use my gift, see? I bet your side has something to show who’s tresset-born, too.” 

They did — a stripe on the sleeve — but prisoners sometimes escaped the camps and she was not about to give information to the enemy, even if it was information they probably already knew, so she said nothing. 

“My grandmother was born in this town,” said the prisoner after a time, when she had scraped her bowl clean. “She moved east for work, and when the war broke out they drew battle lines directly between her old home and her new.” 

“Is that why you became a soldier?” asked Kirrow, despite herself. 

“I became a soldier because I was conscripted.” 

“Oh,” said Kirrow. She gathered up the bowl and spoon and walked away.

“Do you always bring the food, little girl?” called the prisoner. 

“My name is Kirrow.” 

“And mine is Emmeline. Will you come visit again?” 

“Maybe,” said Kirrow, and walked away. 

***

Time, Kirrow had begun to suspect, was an illusion: she stumbled between the three buildings housing the patients and the old jail and Emmer Teylin’s house, and each time the position of the sun seemed to bear no relation to where it had been beforehand. Once she came upon Dorist sitting on the dusty ground with his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking and she found herself frozen, staring at him even as he looked up, red eyes meeting hers in a moment of exhausted recognition, and then she turned and walked away. 

She had been volunteering to deliver the food more often than she would ordinarily, a change she told herself was the result of the unprecedented influx of patients. If she paused at the end of her rounds to speak with Emmeline, well, it was important to know one’s enemies, and Emmeline was the only one of those enemies who spoke Marai. 

Kirrow sat against the back wall of her cell, tracing her fingertips idly through the dirt, mind hazy with exhaustion. Emmeline did not seem in a mood to talk, either; she lay with her eyes closed, skin a waxy grey drove driven Kirrow to unwrap her bandages in search of infection, though she found none. 

“How were you hurt?” 

Emmeline’s eyes flickered open. Voice tight, she said, “I stood somewhat closer to a grenade than is recommended.” 

They lapsed back into silence. After a time, Kirrow said, “how do you do that with your hair?” 

A hint of a smile. “I thought it was impractical?” Then she sobered. “Your mother or father didn’t teach you?” 

“No one here has parents,” said Kirrow. Emmeline’s expression tightened at that, so she added, defensive, “the adults here teach us things. Just not that.” 

“Come here.” 

It was an awkward affair, with Emmeline shackled to the floor and still weak, unable to sit up entirely; she twisted her upper body to the side and Kirrow lay down beside her. Fingers fumbled through her hair, divesting it of its web of ties, raking through tangles. Emmeline worked slowly, breathing heavy like she had been running. She collapsed back onto the ground after only a handful of braids. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I feel sick with these shackles on.” 

“Because of the dampeners?” 

A long, drawn-out breath. “I won’t ask you to …” she gestured vaguely. 

“What’s your gift?” asked Kirrow. 

“Nothing dangerous, don’t worry. I can see in the dark.” 

Kirrow hesitated: she did not know enough of how Taltha marked their tresset-born to know if she was lying. On the other hand, Emmeline was surely too weak to do anything untoward, and besides sickness would slow her healing. Mind made up, she went to the entrance to the jail where the guard stood staring off into the distance. 

“I need to undo one of the prisoner’s shackles to change her bandages,” she said. 

“You managed fine the other times,” said the guard. 

“It was a different bandage. This one doesn’t need to be changed as often.” 

The guard shrugged and followed her inside, lingering by the door as Kirrow unwound the bandages over Emmeline’s torso as slowly as she dared. The wounds beneath were ugly: long, ragged lines of even black stitches punctuated a map of deep bruising and cuts too small to need stitching. She swabbed the area clean, gentler than was her habit, wound new bandages in their stead. The guard replaced the shackles and left with a curt nod. 

Emmeline patted her on the hand. “Thank you, kid.” 

***

Gradually, the frenetic pace of everyday life calmed to a mere rush as patients from before Aula healed enough to be sent home. Lessons had yet to resume but the children had taken to congregating in the schoolhouse in their spare time. Often Selka read to them; from the old paper or some text or another she had scrounged up, or else she had someone else do the reading while she dozed against the back wall. Bone-deep exhaustion had been replaced by an undercurrent of anxiety as the Talthans recovered and grew more belligerent, and although none could understand what they were shouting, the decision had been made to keep the children away. 

It was on a day like this, with Selka leaned back against her desk, reading the old newspaper and the whole class gathered to listen for the first time in weeks that they heard gunshots in the distance, too far away to be sign of a coming raid. Selka sent them away with a tired wave to fix beds for the injured who would surely come stumbling in. Kirrow did not return to the schoolhouse afterwards, seeing as there had been no lessons in the first place; instead she tidied the shelves of Magdalen’s store — this being the price for staying the night in the back room — and listened to the gossip of the adults, who had congregated there. 

“I’ll bet that was the escort for our prisoners that got shot,” said Venn, who was Magdalen’s brother. “That’s the kind of bad luck we have here. Clings to us like honey.” 

“The escort would be coming from the west, not the east, you idiot,” said Magdalen. 

“Whoever they are, we’ll heal them,” said Dorist, shortly, without looking up from where he sat with his head in his arms behind the checkout counter, having claimed Magdalen’s seat there. 

“Will you write to the council, about supplies? More doctors than just you, before you die of exhaustion?” asked Magdalen. 

Dorist shook his head. “Better we don’t draw attention.” 

The door opened and one of Kirrow’s schoolmates stepped inside, a girl by the name of Rosca a year or so her senior. “They’re here,” she announced. 

The soldiers came in a scraggly line from the east, ill-fitting uniforms marred by dust and speckled in blood, but healthy enough once they had been fed and watered and Dorist had stitched a handful of minor cuts. They were a Borderlands unit, eight in all, northern to judge by the accents. 

News of the outside world was rare enough that the entire town gathered in the schoolhouse to hear it, tables dragged back against the wall to make room. The children milled around the edges, entranced by the scene before them: Selka was smiling, wide enough to show the bright gleam of teeth, slumped loosely forward, Magdalen’s arm draped over her shoulder as the other woman laughed. Even Dorist was in good cheer, though he said little as usual. As evening darkened to night, the squad’s sergeant rose to speak. 

“You all need proper rest. Let us watch the town for tonight.” 

Dorist looked ready to object but Selka held up a hand to silence him. “We have your word you’ll wake us if someone needs tending?” 

“Naturally.” 

So they drifted off to their places of rest, feeling lighter than they had in a long time. 

***

Kirrow woke early and overheated, having drawn the short straw and spent the night sandwiched between Kel and Rosca on the mattress in Magdalen’s back room. The woman herself was still asleep, so Kirrow took the opportunity to give her clothes a proper wash in the sink and herself a proper bath as she waited for them to dry. Afterwards, she wandered out onto the street to find it quiet under the lantern light. She could not remember when last the town’s sleep cycle had been defined by day and night. 

For a time she sat, reveling in the silence, until a sense of restless urgency sent her to her feet, as it always did when she was still for too long. She set off away from the clinic — at the end of a crisis sometimes it was as if a young, scared part of her reawakened, so that the thought of the blood and broken flesh she had stitched closed without a second thought days earlier suddenly filled her with panicky revulsion. 

She passed the jail, building front skimming past out the corner of her eye. And turned back, frowning, to find it unguarded, the door hanging open. Inching forward, she peered around the corner and was met with a wall of darkness. She held her breath, listened for the familiar rasp of pained sleep, and found none. The inside of the jail had grown familiar of late. She edged inside, reaching blindly for the lantern, and, after a moment’s hesitation, lit the candle within. The lanternlight did not reach far past the tips of her shoes. She lifted it off the hook, held it out before her to look into the cell, and found it empty. 

Had the escort collected the prisoners in the night? It seemed unlikely, if only because the train’s arrival would have woken the town. Kirrow replaced the lantern and headed for the clinic. All three buildings were unguarded, occupied only by the patients, each and every one of them sound asleep. Suspicious, Kirrow checked their breathing. None had died in the night. It was with more resignation than surprise that she found the supply cupboards empty. A moment to grieve, forehead pressed to wood. Then she went to find Dorist. 

***

“Of course they were raiders! Of course they were! Gods forbid a single good think happen in this fucking town!” Selka paced the street before the clinic, snarling, hands tangled in her hair. 

“It’s done,” said Dorist. He sat on the threshold, hands laced, eyes fixed on the dirt between his feet. 

“What are we going to do, send them home? They’re not healed yet and we can’t afford the supplies to keep them until they are.” 

“I will write to the council,” said Dorist. 

“Since when have they been any help?” 

“Not the regional council. The High Council.” 

Selka halted in her tracks. She turned towards him, arms lowering to her sides. “Are you sure? That could go bad for us, especially the kids, if they respond at all.” 

“It’s as you said. We’re out of options.” He glanced over Kirrow, lingering by the clinic door. “I have nothing for you today. Go be a child.” 

She found Kel and Rosca waiting for her back at the store, awake and organizing the shelves. 

“We got raided by the soldiers from yesterday,” said Kirrow, joining them. “They took the Talthan prisoners and our supplies, so Dorist is giving us time off.” 

“But we’re on the same side,” said Kel. 

“No we’re not, they were Talthans in disguise,” said Kirrow. 

“They were friendly,” said Kel. 

“You’re so stupid, Kel,” said Kirrow. 

“Don’t talk to him like that,” said Rosca. 

Dorist and Selka came in then, looking grave, so they cleared out in favour of lurking at the schoolhouse. A handful of the others were already there — Moren, Tesh, Vissow, and Adenne — replacing the desks in neat lines. 

“What’s happening? I saw there was a meeting,” said Moren, so Kirrow explained, and then explained again when the rest came trickling in a few minutes later. 

Eventually the class migrated onto the roof, having lingered for some time in the schoolhouse, unbalanced by the uncharacteristic lack of direction. They had climbed up, boosted by Moren, who was tallest, on the half-formed plan of examining the damage from the raid before last. That mission had been quickly abandoned, and now they lay on warm the surface, staring out at the town. 

Estamel was not particularly impressive from above: a sprawl of low, flat-topped buildings, mottled from the damage of years of neglect. For all their disrepair the rooftops stretched out a long way. Kirrow was so rarely struck by the true size of her home, cycling between the clinic and the school and Magdalen’s store, all crowded less than two blocks apart, the rest of the town draped around them like a too-large coat that would only get larger as her own generation grew to adulthood and left. 

“Let’s play runner ball,” said Moren suddenly. 

He stripped off his sweater and rolled it tight. They divided into teams of six, each with a split of older and younger kids, backed away to line up at opposite ends of the roof with the makeshift ball in the centre. Moren and Fracte, who were team captains, counted down. When they reached zero, the teams scattered, the captains racing for the ball, the rest leaping into position on the surrounding rooftops. 

A brief scuffle ended with Fracte in possession of the ball, which she lobbed overhand to Vissow on the next roof as Moren tackled her to the ground. Vissow sprinted for the roof edge, skidded to a halt inches from the edge and threw the ball hard. It sailed over the next roof, both teams racing for the gap; Kirrow threw herself down on her stomach, snatched it by a sleeve as it plummeted towards the ground. Kel grabbed her by the collar, outstretched fingertips scrabbling for the ball. Head craned back, she made a clumsy throw to Moren on the roof behind her, who caught it, fending off Meriye with his spare hand. 

Runner ball hardly ever had a victor, not with the respective goals being placed at opposite edges of the town, but Fracte’s team had, in a series of lightening passes, brought them southward to where they had become locked in a standstill between Magdalen’s store and two of the empty houses beside it. Pinned against hot stone, Adenne’s knee to her chest, Kirrow scrabbled blindly for the ball, panting, fingertips brushing fabric. Shenen cursed beside her, shoes knocking into her shin as he wrestled his own opponent. A whoop of triumph told her someone had reached the ball and she and Adenne disentangled themselves, stumbling to their feet. There was a rush for the rooftops adjacent as Kel, who held the ball, prepared his pass; Rosca jumped into a line of players from the opposing team and would have fallen had Meriye not caught her by the shirtfront. 

“STOP!” Selka shouted. “Are you serious? We lost all our medical supplies and you lot are out here jumping on the roof?” 

She wore a strange expression as she watched them climb down the ladder she had fetched from Magdalen’s store. When they were all on the ground, she said, “Magdalen and Dorist can handle writing the Council. I better get back to teaching you lot before your brains rot out of your heads completely.” 

***

When the train next pulled into the station, the town was already assembled to watch. Selka had spent an inordinate amount of time fussing over the children that morning, once they had finished readying the remaining patients for travel, and now she lingered towards the back with them rather than at her usual position at Dorist’s side. They had argued, days ago, so ferociously Selka stormed away in angry tears and Magdalen took over the job of riding to the next town to deliver the letter. 

The quiet murmur of conversation died as the train pulled into the station. The man who stepped out — a regal, aging Midlander with slicked-backed silver hair — peered down his nose at the weather-worn boards of the platform, then at the townspeople gathered to greet him. 

“Who is in charge here?” 

An exchange of glances, then Dorist stepped forward. “I suppose I am — Dr. Dorist Zenem.” 

“You’re the one who lost all your supplies, then?” 

“We were raided,” said Dorist, stiffly. 

“Raided through a singular lack of caution.” 

“Whatever the reason, it’s done,” cut in Selka. “We have no supplies. Are you going to help or not?” 

He turned towards her with a bland smile. “Who do all these children belong to?” 

“Me.” 

“There are an awful lot of them, not to mention you must have given birth to the youngest when you were ten, eleven years old? Truly, that is remarkable.” When Selka said nothing, he pressed on. “You are their legal guardian?” 

“We all take care of them.” 

“Then I thank you for your service and assure you the cadets will carry on the good work you have started.” Ignoring Selka’s outraged expression, he turned towards the rest of the group. “Gather your wounded — I would like to be gone within the hour. We will find some use for the rest of you, and provide care for your elderly.” Emmer, who had been following the conversation through Venn’s translation to hand signs, made a rude gesture in the inspector’s direction. 

“Why?” asked Selka. “We’ve been here for years, healing the people you send us. Why can’t you send us supplies and be done with it?” 

“I do not make the decisions, merely enforce them,” said the inspector. 

“Well, can we appeal it?” 

Magdalen put a hand on her arm. “Selka, it’s over. It’s been over since the first time we set them to work in the clinic.” Selka shook her off, but she said nothing more.

At the back of the group Kel began to cry, silently, face hidden in his hands. 

“You’re such a baby,” Kirrow hissed at him, though her own eyes stung traitorously and something cold and hard had settled deep in the pit of her stomach. 

***

The inspector watched, disinterested, as the wounded limped onto the train. Tall for her age but a child nonetheless, Kirrow could do little more than act as a crutch for the healthiest among them, hands gripping her shoulders as they edged forwards. Her charge — a man, old for a soldier but young in the greater scheme of things, fell on the third stair up to the train platform and sat there panting, bronze skin gone sickly grey. She waited for him, trying to hide her impatience, as Magdalen and Selka carried another soldier past, holding her gently as they could manage around her chest and ankles. When her own soldier’s colour had returned to something resembling normal, she heaved him up by the elbow. Venn, standing in the entrance to the train, helped him up the steps, then stood aside for Kirrow to follow. 

Kirrow found Kel and Rosca ensconced in a compartment towards the far end of the first car, the room small but cozy, with long, plush benches set facing each other and a space for luggage above their heads. When she sat, the soft cushioning seemed to swallow her up. On the bench opposite, Kel hunched in on himself, tear-stained face pressed against the window as Rosca rubbed gentle circles over his back, her own eyes far away. 

Past the bubbled glass of the window, sun sparkled on the schoolhouse roof. No one had bothered to fix it, though in the past days there had been time. From the way Kel and Rosca stared at it Kirrow expected some wave of emotion that would knock her from her feet, but it all looked too familiar to spark anything but a vague, uneasy realization that she would never look at this town as she looked at it now; that time would wear it away in her mind to a collection of washed out memories, so that if ever she returned it would not be to a familiar place. 

An abrupt lurch and they were moving in a rattling, jolting forward crawl. Soon the last buildings faded into the distance, first to tiny black specks and then to an endless stretch of savanna. Something tightened in her throat and Kirrow turned away, angry at her own weakness, to stare blank-faced at the cabin wall. The noise at least drowned out Kel’s wailing cries. 

Some time later, when Kel and Rosca had fallen asleep and Kirrow stared at the endless grassland past the window, Dorist slipped into the cabin. 

“I want you to know I’m sorry,” he said, softly. 

“Why, where are we going?” asked Kirrow. 

“I don’t know, Kirrow, but that isn’t what I meant — I don’t know yet if I’m going to be sorry for writing that letter. I’m sorry that we — that I — never let you have a childhood. All of you have seen things people your age never should. I know I can never erase that damage, but I’m sorry it’s there.” 

“There wasn’t time for anyone to be useless,” said Kirrow. 

At that Dorist looked mournful. He kissed her on the forehead before he left, then Rosca and Kel. 

***

A signpost announced the town’s name as Shelest. Smaller but more populous than Estamel, it counted a handful of low, brick buildings, a mixture of Borderlander and Midlander soldiers swarming between them. When the train rolled to a stop, the inspector corralled the children out onto the platform and down the street to the largest of the buildings. Inside, the windows were thrown open in an only partially successful effort to dispel the stuffy warmth of the air. Buried behind a chaotic mass of paper, the receptionist glanced up as they entered. 

“From Estamel,” the inspector told him. “The adults will be along shortly and the wounded are on the train, awaiting evaluation.” 

The man noted this down. He gestured towards a hallway to the right. “Line up along that wall, please.” 

They lined up along the wall. Kirrow found herself towards the front, staring at the cracking white paint across from her. No one spoke — there was a sense of something important and grown-up going on, not to be interrupted. Beside her, Moren rubbed a hand endlessly up and down his arm. In the entranceway, the inspector leaned against the receptionist’s desk, deep in conversation. 

The door at the end of the hall opened to reveal a middle-aged man in a beige smock like the one Dorist wore while he did his rounds. He summoned Fracte — who was at the front of the line — to come inside. There were two doctors, the man and a woman, and it was the latter who examined Kirrow when her time came, the same efficient once-over Dorist was in the habit of conducting every year or so, when he had the time to spare. Afterwards, she sent her to wait in a small, bland room at the end of the hall where a few of the younger kids sat on wooden benches against the wall. 

Some time later, a man entered through the back door: a Borderlander by origin, hair and beard greying, likely in his fourth or fifth decade, uniformed as a soldier and walking with a pronounced limp. He surveyed the room, which contained the children from Estamel who had not yet reached their tenth year: Kirrow, Rosca, Kel, Vissow, and five-year-old Tejena, the youngest. 

“Good afternoon, kids, and congratulations on your recruitment to the Junior Cadets. We’re still waiting on a few more from another village not far from here, so I’ll be teaching you some basics before they arrive and we ship you off to your assigned base. Corporal Vinec is my name. Allow me to show you to your quarters.” 

Their quarters consisted of a single room, high windows open to let in air, lined with three-level wood-frame bunk beds. Affairs settled on spare bunks, he led the gaggle of children outside to a square courtyard where another group grappled in pairs. 

“The cadets are going to teach you all about fighting. What I’m going to do now is give you an edge when you get there, or at least keep you from getting too badly hurt: I’m going to teach you how to take a hit,” said Corporal Vinec. “Line up, feet square, dominant leg in front, arms up.” 

He went down the line, checking their stances, nudging feet apart, straightening shoulders. When it came Kirrow’s turn, he pushed her elbows in, stepped back, and punched her in the nose. It was not a particularly hard hit but she stumbled back, eyes watering, face stinging fiercely. 

“What was that for?” she demanded. 

Corporal Vinec moved over to stand in front of Kel, who was beside her. He flinched, but the corporal moved past him and Tejena both. Vissow raised his arms to ward off the hit, missed, and tripped backwards over his feet. Rosca did only marginally better, edging back a step a moment before the corporal’s fist connected with her nose. He moved back along the line. Still blinking away tears from the first hit, Kirrow caught the second as a blur in the corner of her eye and jerked her head to the side, taking it on her cheekbone instead. On her third attempt, two passes later, she wrenched her head out of the way of the corporal’s fist only to pull something in her neck, the fiery ache worse than the punch. 

“I’ve given you all an advantage,” said the corporal. 

“What advantage?” asked Kirrow. “You haven’t taught us anything yet.” 

“You know what it feels like to take a hit — that means you won’t be wasting precious seconds getting over your shock when someone gets past your defenses,” he said. “Now, what you want to do when someone’s aiming a punch in your direction is keep your eyes open so you can track where they’re aiming and twist away from it. Pair up and keep trying until you get it right.” 

***

By evening, the train had pulled away, bearing the wounded towards their destination, along with Dorist, Magdalen, and Emmer Teylin. By morning, Selka and Venn were gone in a carriage heading west, the older children marching after them, guided by another corporal. By midday, the last batch of recruits arrived, pulled in a cart. A small, ragged bunch, grimy and underfed, they clung together in a distrustful clump as Corporal Vinec herded them outside after their checkups. 

Facing away from the door, Kirrow’s first indication of their arrival was her fist connecting straight on with the stomach of the recruit she had been sparring with. He doubled over, coughing. 

“You’re supposed to harden your stomach muscles when I do that,” said Kirrow. 

He wheezed at her indignantly. “It’s the new recruits. They look really young.” 

And they did — the eldest might have been five or six, the youngest barely four. Corporal Vinec led them over. 

“These tough little things are street kids. Get yourselves paired up with them and they’ll show you a thing or two about fighting.” 

With a last, dubious glance at her sparring partner, Kirrow chose one of the children. The girl barely came up to her shoulder. 

“You know how to dodge?” asked Kirrow. The girl bared her teeth. Kirrow crouched down so they were at eye-level. “I’m going to hit you now.” 

Hesitantly, she went to tap the girl on the cheek — and a mass of unkempt red hair bowled her to the ground, sharp little teeth sinking into her shoulder. Cursing, she grabbed the girl by the collar and yanked backwards. A flailing arm caught her in the face; the sharp edge of a wooden boot-heel in the shin. The girl tore loose from her grasp. On instinct Kirrow kicked out, sent her flying back into the dirt where she lay panting. 

“Shit,” she panted, rubbing at the tooth marks in her shoulder. “Shit, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. Are you hurt?” The girl snarled, pushed herself to her feet. 

Corporal Vinec chuckled. “See that, kids? That’s how you’re going to fight.” He checked his pocket watch. “And in that spirit, it’s time we got you all divided up and sent off.” He paced up and down the line, mumbling to himself. “Kirrow, Jedec, Merissa, I’ll be sending you to Skanda.” This turned out to be her former sparring partner and the girl who had bitten her, respectively. Kirrow tried to hide her disappointment. “Kel, you too. Might do you good to stay with someone you know.” 

“Sir, can I stay with Rosca instead?” asked Kel. 

“Someone you know who won’t be soft on you.” He waved a hand. “Go on. There’s a cart waiting out front.” 

“Now?” asked Kel, arms wrapping around his stomach. 

“Obviously now,” said Kirrow. She led the way around the main building. 

***

The tedium of hours spent cross-legged on the floor of a wooden cart with no protection from the sun but a cloth canopy invited an obsession with one’s own discomfort the frenetic pace of clinic work never allowed. Kel, clearly unbalanced by the succession of rapid changes in his life, pressed close by Kirrow’s side despite the blazing sun. Across from her, Merissa sat with her legs drawn up and a sharp malevolence in her eyes she worried meant she would soon be fending off sharp teeth. Jedec had fallen asleep against the corner of the cart, having spent the first hours pretending he was not watching Merissa out the corner of his eye. 

“What do you think Skanda is like?” asked Kel. 

“I think it’s a city,” said Jedec, who had startled awake at the sound of his voice. “It’s really big, probably, and I bet there’s all sorts of factories and you can buy anything you want really cheap.” 

“We don’t have money,” Kirrow pointed out. 

“My cousin works at a factory,” said Jedec. 

“Are you allowed to be in the cadets and work at the same time?” asked Kirrow. 

“I dunno. Maybe they pay you for being in the cadets like they do for the army.” 

“What do cadets do?” asked Kel. 

“My cousin says they’re scary,” said Jedec. 

“I’m never, ever going to be a cadet. I’ll beat them all until their eyes fall out,” said Merissa. No one spoke after that. 

With its sprawl of low brick buildings and dirt alleys, Skanda looked much as Estamel must have, before everyone moved away. The driver guided the cart down a wide avenue that might have been the main street, past factories and shops, peasants dragging handcarts and merchants in loose, colourful robes, until they came to a towering concrete wall topped in barbed wire, monolithic but for a gate of wrought iron that swung open as they came near. A three-storey stone compound sat in the centre of an expanse of packed dirt, disappointingly incongruous in face of its defenses.

Kel curled in on himself, dark skin paling. When he pressed closer, Kirrow was almost glad for the contact. Behind them, the gate slammed shut.


	5. All Who Draw Blood: Part 2

_The Soldier brought them together and the Monarch split them apart. By then the Soldier’s war had come and passed and come again. They had been kings and queens and warlords and a family, and now, in the nine-sided palace of this oldest city of Ciet Acobansiz, they were becoming something different. Not new, at least not entirely — the Cepanese worshipped the Traveler and had done so for millennia already, the way one worships a strange older cousin who sweeps into town once a half-decade with stories to amaze a child and alarm an adult — but all across the world, the people looked to the Judge with a fanaticism that had become unsettling, as of late._

_Time has tempered the Soldier’s rages. This time, when she picked up her sword, it is far deadlier then when she set it down._

**Month of the Soldier, 813**

Clumps of black hair drifted to the ground to join the pile already accumulated there. Rough fingers took hold of another clump, knife blade sawing through tangles and Emmeline’s braids. Kirrow sat very still as the blade ghosted over her scalp, leaving behind no more than a gentle fuzz. No reason at all to be upset, not when she had spent so much time cursing the strands that fell in her eyes, not when those braids served as nothing more than a reminder of a moment of weakness, of trust in the enemy where there should only have been hatred. Despite herself, she grieved. 

Dressed in a loose shirt and pants of plain black — they had taken away her old clothes — she walked past the line of recruits not yet done with their own haircuts to wait at the far end of the room. The girl nearest, a Midlander, stared despondently down at the long, honey-blond braid clutched in her hands. Kel wormed his way forward to stand with her, fingers curling around her wrist. 

“I want to go home,” he whispered. 

“You can’t be like this here,” said Kirrow, prying his fingers free. She gestured with the other hand, searching for the word. “Like yourself.” 

He backed away, chin trembling. This was where Rosca would have stepped in with her gentle reproach. In the silence that followed Kirrow waited for her to speak, before she remembered the other girl was not there. Likely she would not be there ever again. They had never truly been friends, the same way Kirrow and Kel had never truly been friends, but Estamel had been small enough to force companionship through sheer relentless proximity, and suddenly she felt her absence as an ache. 

“I’m trying to take care of you,” she whispered to Kel. 

“No you’re not. All you do is be mean to me.” 

“I’m only mean because you always cry, and crying’s a useless waste of time.” 

Arms crossed tight, Kel slunk away. _Fine, then._ He would come crawling back soon enough, or else learn to make it on his own so she wouldn’t need to worry over all his whining. Kirrow reached up to tug at her hair only to remember it was gone. 

***

A ferocious woman with biceps larger than Kirrow’s head and a webbed burn over the left half of her body, Drill Sergeant paced back and forth through the cavernous concrete room. Her tirade washed over them like a summer storm, fast and angry, the words themselves less important than the perception of blind fury. At Kirrow’s side, Merissa bristled, skinny body bunched up tight, but so far her self-control held. 

Finally the shouting part of the lecture wound down. 

“Street kids,” Drill Sergeant said. “Orphans, rabble, delinquents. Alone, none of you would amount to anything. As cadets, you have the chance to be something better.” She stood facing them, fingers laced. “I won’t lie to you — this will be hard. You’re going to get hurt and it’s going to make you stronger. It will make the country stronger, when we excise the rot that is people like you left unchecked.” 

She held up a flat red coin, pierced through at the top with a hole the size of a pinhead. “This is a token. You need tokens to eat and get into dorms. You win a fight in here, you win a token. Outside this room, you get them however you can. Right now you’re all recruits. You get a gold token off a cadet, you become a cadet. You become a cadet, you don’t need a token sleep in a bed or to eat. This —” she tucked the token away and pulled out a folding baton — “is your best friend.” 

***

Recruits in matte black streamed past alongside cadets in green jackets and shorts, tokens pinned at the chest. The back of Kirrow’s neck prickled as she walked, hand resting on the unfamiliar weight of the baton at her hip. With her own chest bare of tokens she had no reason to fear, but unease clung to her like a shadow all the same. Her human shadow had not returned: Kel had hurried for the door the moment Drill Sergeant finished her speech and she had not seen him since. 

A glance at the clock high on the wall told her it would soon be dinner time. She tapped a finger against the hilt of her baton — nerves still kept her hunger at bay but malnutrition would do her no favours, especially not in a place like this. 

Ahead, Merissa had her teeth sunken into a boy twice her size, a third child on top of them both, struggling to pin her to the floor. Hardly daring breathe, Kirrow edged forward, snapped her baton to its full length on her second try. Raised it above her head, then brought it down hard between the third child’s neck and shoulder. He rolled off Merissa and the other boy in one smooth motion, baton sliding into his hand as he regained his feet. She lunged for him but he danced out of the way and she fell, concrete stripping the skin from her palms. Kirrow twisted under the baton strike to her spine, reared back, and kicked him in the knee. 

They ended up tangled together on the floor, Kirrow’s knee in the boy’s stomach as she wrestled with the pin holding his tokens in place. He slammed his forehead against hers. The back of her skull bounced against concrete, darkness crawling over her vision. By the time her eyes cleared, he was gone and the last echoes of the dinner bell were ringing in her ears. With a groan, she levered herself to her feet. 

The halls were empty but not deserted; as she walked she passed a handful of others, eyes flickering downwards, reflexively checking each other for tokens. Kirrow noted their faces — not the new ones, who had come in with her own cohort and would learn to fight soon enough, but the ones she did not recognize, who had had long enough to adapt but had failed all the same. These ones would be the easy targets, later. 

The halls grew emptier the farther she walked. She found classrooms and training rooms with thin mats and sandbags, locked doors and a library where she stood gaping, stunned at the sheer volume of books. By the time she made it from one end of the compound to the other, the halls had begun to fill once more. 

In one of the washrooms she found another girl perched on the counter, frowning as she taped up a wound on her arm. Three red tokens hung at her chest. Kirrow hesitated. She was too late to eat dinner, but not to spent the night in a real bed. Quietly, she slid her baton to full length. The girl did not look up. Kirrow hit her across the temple. She slumped, slid sideways off the counter to fall in a heap on the floor. Kirrow hurriedly unhooked the girl’s tokens and attached them to her own chest. Then she probed the girl’s head — she would hurt when she woke, but there would be no lasting damage. Probably. 

Her search uncovered Kel in an alcove in a back corner of the library, arms wrapped around his knees. He startled when she came over, then straightened up, smiling ruefully. He’d gained no tokens of his own, so she pressed one into his hand. 

“I didn’t recognize you at first. I keep forgetting we don’t have hair anymore.” They stood there together for a long time, Kel rubbing his thumb over the token’s edge. “I’m sorry about this morning.” 

Kirrow waved him off. “Just don’t loose that. I’m not getting you another one.” 

To her surprise, he followed her when she went to find the dormitories, pressed almost against her side. Kirrow held herself straight, confident, but the tokens pinned at her chest wore away at what little ease she had won through her exploration. To her surprise, however, they made it to the dorms without incident, paid the entry fee of a token each to the cadet standing guard outside. Kirrow chose a bunk — these were of the same type as in the compound in Shelest — and lay back, the myriad aches of the past week making themselves known all at once. 

“Can I —?” Kel asked. 

“Sure.” 

He climbed over her to the side closest the wall, and they lay there together, not quite touching, as the lights died and slowly the room drifted to silence. 

***

She dreamed of open sky and blazing sun and sand soaked red, of bodies lying prone in every direction, cries mingling in the air. Kirrow stood useless in the midst of it all, hands clean and loose at her sides, pant legs stiff and tacky with dried blood. 

She lurched awake, fell sideways and hit something hard, right arm pinned beneath her body. Something warm and fleshy pressed hard over her mouth. This was not the clinic. Was not anywhere in Estamel, where the floors were brick or smooth stone. Suddenly she was moving, arms pinned at her sides, heels bumping against the floor. A murmur of voices, then a curse when she lashed out, toes connecting with something hard that might have been a shin. A door opened and closed, clipped against her leg as the person holding her struggled to drag her through. 

“Get her legs,” someone said, and she was lifted off the ground completely. 

Fingers dug into her ankles. Her body tilted downwards, jolting with each step. Stairs, she guessed, and steep ones. Whoever held her legs kept dropping them. Finally, the movement stopped. Hands left her body. A moment of vertigo but the fall was only far enough to jar her sore limbs. Blinking hard against the darkness, she noticed for the first time cloth against her eyes. She flung it away, but it made no difference: she could see nothing but darkness. Slowly, she climbed to her feet. Arms outstretched, she started walking. And tripped. 

A fumbling search with her hands told her she had found the stairs. On hands and knees, she crawled to the top, felt up and down the door until she smacked her fingers hard against the doorknob. Locked, but that was no surprise. For a time she sat, back against the door, struggling against tears. 

Eventually she climbed down, made a loop of the room with her fingers trailing along the wall and found it barely wider than the span of her arms. Her heart beat too hard against her ribs. The air felt tight and stuffy. Her body shook as if fevered. Pressed against the wall, she sunk down, stretched out on her back. Forced herself to breath evenly. She held a hand in front of her face, straining to see the outline of her fingers, and found only darkness. She closed her eyes, and waited.

***

Light trickled in. Kirrow blinked awake, body aching, to stare up at the low ceiling above her. On her feet, she found the door at the top of the short flight of stairs thrown open. Scrubbing a hand through the fuzz that remained of her hair, she climbed back up to the corridor. She found Kel leaned against the wall opposite, sniffling quietly into his sleeves. There was no one else in sight. 

“We must have missed breakfast. Come on, we should check for our batons in the dorms before everyone gets back,” said Kirrow. 

“I want to go home,” said Kel. 

Kirrow sighed. “This is home now.” 

Kel drew closer. “We could leave, find everyone else and go back to Estamel.” 

“Don’t be stupid, Kel.” Kirrow set off down the hall. “Come on. They’ll be done eating soon.” 

The dorms were unguarded during the day. Kirrow and Kel searched the room top to bottom but failed to find so much as a stray sock. By the time they finished breakfast was long since over and the hallways were bustling once more. Hungry and half-asleep, Kirrow weighed her chances at a fight as they headed for the training room: she would not get stronger without food, but she would get no food without tokens. Combat practice would be her best option — at least a few of the others would be new and likely as hungry as her — or subterfuge. Either way, she needed to get herself and Kel fed some time that day or they would never make headway. 

Drill Sergeant was in the midst of a rant at the latecomers already by the time they arrived, close up in the face of a little blond recruit who looked near tears. Joining the line, Kirrow tuned her out except to say _Yes, sir!_ during the pauses. Drill Sergeant’s eyes snapped to her and Kel. 

“You are missing your batons.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Kirrow. 

“Why?” 

There was a test, here, of the implicit camaraderie of recruit against officer. But Kirrow owed none of them anything, so she said, “If you can’t figure it out with how long you’ve worked here, that’s your problem.” 

A moment of silence, then Drill Sergeant burst out laughing. “For that, Raecovin, you’re up first. Two against one.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

She went to the mat at the centre of the room, settled near the centre with her legs apart as Corporal Vinec had taught. Her palms had gone slick with sweat; she wiped them on her pants and wondered if that looked a show of weakness. The recruits gathered, fifty black-clad figures sitting cross-legged around the mat. Perhaps one in five were Borderlanders, one in four of mixed blood. In the front row, Kel shot her a tremulous smile. Drill Sergeant stood at the back of the room, surveying them all. 

“Isket, you’re up. And you, Larsey.” 

A pair of Midlanders lumbered forward, one brown-haired and one blond, both taller than Kirrow by a handspan and twice as wide. 

Isket pulled out his baton, tapped it lightly against his leg. Leaning forward, he said, “Listen, it doesn’t pay to mouth of to the sergeant.” 

“I noticed.” 

“We getting started or what?” asked Larsey. 

“Go ahead,” said Drill Sergeant. 

The fight lasted barely fifteen seconds: one moment Kirrow was on her feet, facing the two older recruits, the next she was flat on her back, wrists pinned above her head, the weight of Larsey’s body pressing her against the ground hard enough to feel concrete beneath the mat. Five red tokens dangled in front of her face. 

She craned her neck until they brushed at her mouth, pressed her teeth against the metal bar holding them in place. Muffled by Larsey’s body, she heard Drill Sergeant counting. The bar lifted from its socket. She took two tokens between her teeth, jerked her head to the side to slide them from the bar. Ignoring the bitter taste of metal, she tucked them between her teeth and her cheek.

Drill Sergeant reached zero. Isket pulled her to her feet. Metal sour in her mouth, she took her place on the floor beside Kel as the victors collected a token each. 

“Is anyone looking?” she whispered. Kel shook his head, so she spat out the tokens and tucked them into her pocket. 

“Mascari,” called Drill Sergeant. Kel froze, suddenly pale despite his dark skin. Kirrow nudged him upright. Drill Sergeant’s gaze swept over the room. “And Geless. Get in there.” 

The two boys stood facing each other, a pair of Borderlanders far from home. Geless was a reedy type, taller than Kel only by a fraction but with less muscle — it had been Kel’s job to haul supplies, back in Estamel. For all his inexperience, he might have a chance. 

“Begin,” called Drill Sergeant. 

Geless circled, cautious. Kel tracked him with his eyes, arms held close by his sides, shoulders hunched in. And Kirrow knew he would lose the fight. He scrambled back when Geless came towards him, arms over his face, backpedaling until he hit the edge of the mat. 

“Stop running away and hit him, you idiot,” said Kirrow. 

“No advice from the side!” said Drill Sergeant. 

Kel lunged, messy and uncoordinated but wholly unexpected; Geless jumped back to dodge and Kel caught him by the shirt-front, dragging them both forward. Geless elbowed him in the face, followed through with a flurry of brutal, rapid-fire punches that left him curled on his side. Drill Sergeant counted down to zero. 

At first Kirrow thought he would not be able to walk away without help, but Kel pried himself off the floor, swayed, and limped away to flop down at Kirrow’s side while Geless collected his tokens. 

“He has an extra baton hidden in his shirt,” whispered Kel. 

Kirrow passed him a token. “I’ll handle it. You get food.” 

***

During class time, Kirrow and the other new arrivals wrote a test to see how well they could read and write and do sums and what they knew of history and the war and science. Hungry and aching, she must have done poorly, though not so poorly as Merissa, who by the way she scowled down at the paper had never been taught to read. 

At lunch she resumed her exploration, then hurriedly ate the heel of bread and sack of dried berries Kel had smuggled out for her before classes resumed and they spent the afternoon listening to an account of early Evatan settlement, which had apparently stretched as far east as the current Talthan capital of Lanadara. 

In the evening, she left Kel outside the dorms and chose a third-level bunk for herself near the door. Perched at the edge, she watched the room fill. Geless took a middle bunk in the back corner of the room, where Kirrow could only see him if she lay on her stomach, head over the edge of her bunk. Lying down her body grew heavy, limbs remote, eyes drifting shut of their own accord. She jammed the fresh bruises on her back against the bedframe, pressing hard so the pain kept her awake. The lights went out. Slowly chatter died away, replaced by the soft sounds of sleep. 

Kirrow slid to the end of her bunk, where she sat frozen, running her hands along the bedframe until she found the ladder. On the ground, she wound her way between bunks, guided by the faint light that seeped through the edges of the doorframe, until she reached the spot where Geless lay splayed on his back. 

A pause to listen for his quiet breathing, then she climbed up, fingers ghosting over the sheets. She leaned farther in, one knee on the mattress, braced against the wall as she searched. Geless groaned and she jerked back, breath held, but all he did was turn over so she could see the faint gleam of tokens pinned at his chest. She reached behind him and finally, finally, her fingers brushed something smooth and hard. She tucked both batons into her waistband, and then, after a moment’s consideration, gently removed his tokens. Then she returned to her own bunk, curled up protectively around her prizes, and slept. 

____

**Month of the Inventor, 813**

Plastered against the wall, baton in hand, Kirrow watched as the recruit joined the crowd lining up for dining hall, eyes flickering nervously as he took in his surroundings. The boy had been there two weeks, a decent enough fighter to have amassed a pair of tokens since that morning but evidently lacking confidence in his ability to keep them. Kirrow showed him his fears were well-founded: a quick scuffle and she came up in possession of one token — to wear more was an invitation to attack. She paid the entrance fee and slipped inside. 

Dining hall consisted of a long counter at the front of the room where they stood in line for their share of food and a collection of tables where they sat to eat, cadets at the front of the room, recruits at the back. 

Kirrow chose a spot at a low, wooden table against the far wall where she could watch the former group — the younger cadets shared classes with recruits but otherwise spent little time together; Kirrow had seen none fight but Geless and Larsey, the latter having gained her admittance the same day as her and Kirrow’s disastrous fight, the former a week and a half afterward. She had fought both once and lost each time, though against Geless it had been a close match. It was harder to judge her skill against Larsey; her own inexperience at the time of their first leaving her little frame of reference to compare their level of skill besides what she had gathered of the girl’s reputation since. 

The easiest route would be to wait until one of the cadets became injured to offset the benefits of experience, not to mention guaranteed food and a proper place to sleep, but to do that was to risk marking herself the weak link, doomed to spent the rest of her days fending off attacks from recruits. Attempting to win a token from Geless might present a similar problem, given he was the newest of the cadets. Larsey had enough of a reputation for any victory against her to be considered impressive, but that same reputation made Kirrow wary of a straight fight. 

“Aren’t you going to eat?” asked Kel, sliding into the seat beside her. He’d lost weight since Estamel where Kirrow had gained it, cheekbones sitting too sharp beneath his skin. 

She shovelled in a mouthful of corn paste. “Which cadet are you going to fight?” 

“I don’t want to think about it,” said Kel. 

“You can’t be a recruit forever,” said Kirrow. 

Kel shook his head, pushing his food around on his plate. “Kirrow, please can’t we leave?” 

“Shut up about that. Do you think I could beat Larsey in a fight?” 

Kel shook his head again. Kirrow shrugged and went back to studying the cadets. The boy beside Larsey seemed promising — Shenen, a Midlander with a shock of blond hair, a slight limp from an old injury, and a cheerful absentmindedness which had somehow survived his time as a recruit and which would serve to her advantage in an ambush. 

A weight pressed against her side and she glanced over to find Kel leaning into her shoulder, expression tight around the eyes. 

“I don’t want you to leave me behind,” he said, quietly. 

***

In class she eyed the cadets — Shenen was asleep, Larsey doodling idly on his arm — and tried to puzzle out how this information might be of use while the teacher lectured on Evatan grammar in the background. To her right, Isket tapped the end of his pen listlessly against the page.

“I’ll trade you kitchen duty and a token for cleaning in the south hall,” she whispered. 

“Okay,” Isket whispered back. “Want to cellar the new kids? Jedec says he saw them come in.” 

“Sure.” 

Kel leaned in from the left. “That’s awful, how could you do that?” 

Kirrow rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a baby, Kel, we’re doing them a favour. They’ll never belong here otherwise.” 

The teacher turned towards them, then, eyebrows raised, and they fell to silence. 

***

On her hands and knees on the concrete of the south hallway, soapy water dripping from her hands, Kirrow watched through squinted eyes as a group of cadets left for patrol, Larsey and Shenen among them. She ducked her head as they passed, hastily resuming her deep clean of the floor. When they were gone she sat up, wiped her fingers dry, and poked her head around the corner into the cadet dormitories to check it was empty.

Her brief investigation yielded little of interest: the cadets were assigned permanent bunks, each with a small, locked cubby. The bedsheets were all made up in neat, identical order. Shenen slept near the centre of the room, Larsey a few rows to the right. With a shrug, she headed back into the hallway to resume her scrubbing. In half an hour of work she’d seen only a handful of cadets in the halls and no recruits — a decent place for an attack, and near enough to Drill Sergeant’s office to make it at a sprint. 

This was the hallway they would come through when they returned from patrol, all in a clump that would make any attack a mistake. Safer but farther away were the washroom entrances, convenient because everyone would pass through at some point, maybe even to wash up after patrol, when they would be tired and vulnerable. 

Footsteps startled her out of her thoughts but it was only Kel picking his way between the wet spots on the floor towards her. 

“Kirrow, can I ask you something?” A pause while he fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “When you become a cadet, can you give me one of your tokens?” 

“So we both look weak and all the other recruits try to take our tokens to become cadets? No.”

“I’d give them tokens if they asked,” said Kel. He took up her abandoned brush and started scrubbing. 

“Then they wouldn’t be prepared if they needed to fight someone on patrol,” said Kirrow. When Kel only shrugged despondently, she pressed on. “Do you really miss people bleeding and dying all over us that much?” 

“I miss being _home,_ with people who take care of us. I miss not worrying about getting hit by someone in the hallway. I miss being allowed to eat.” 

“You’re allowed to eat if you’re good at getting tokens, which you should be because we’ve been here more than a month.” 

“I can’t fight like you,” said Kel. 

“You could if you’d just try,” said Kirrow. “And you got a token for breakfast today, so obviously you can do something.” 

“But I’m not good at it.” 

Kirrow looked to the ceiling to muster her patience. “Try kicking them in the knees, that usually works.” When he still looked uncertain, she sighed. “Fine. Help me with this floor and we can practice.” 

Kel, she discovered, was a surprisingly decent fighter — a month and a half of inconsistent meals had lost him most of the muscle mass that would once have granted him an advantage, but of their five fights he won two. 

“It’s not the same fighting other people,” he said, mop slung over his shoulder as they made their way back to the supply closet. “I get nervous.” 

“Then get more nervous about starving to death than you are about fighting.” 

“But I don’t want anyone else to starve, either.” 

“No one else is thinking that when they fight you.” 

***

Kirrow stretched ink-stained fingers, shuffled the backlog of schoolwork she had neglected in favour of studying the cadets and tucked it back into her desk. The halls had already begun to empty, recruits drifting towards dorms or searching for a soft piece of concrete to spend the night. She met Isket near the dining hall, along with a handful of others, Jedec among them, and Merissa. He passed around cloth blindfolds, and they split off into pairs, Kirrow and Isket heading for the corridor between the dorms and classrooms where the new recruits often slept, too unfamiliar with the compound to risk venturing farther out. 

“Who do you think I should fight to get into the cadets?” asked Kirrow. 

“Someone who’s about to be sent off for their pre-Army program so you won’t have to worry about them very long if they get angry with you,” said Isket. “I heard one cadet tripped down a well and died when he went on patrol alone with the one he won his token from.” 

“But the ones going in for pre-Army are thirteen or fourteen. I’d lose for sure.” 

“I guess. I think I’m going to steal mine.” 

A boy sat against the wall, still awake, skinny arms wrapped around his knees, faintly illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the window. He glanced up at the sound of footsteps, eyes wide, frozen between hope and terror. Isket swooped down, hauled him to his feet with arms wrapped around his chest, keeping scrawny arms pinned at his side. Positioned awkwardly at his shoulder, Kirrow wrapped the cloth around his eyes. Each holding an arm, they marched him to the cellar stairs, stiff between them, carried him down the stairs into a sunken storage area not unlike the one where Kirrow had spent her first night. 

They found a second recruit curled up in the library, a younger kid who screeched like a hellion before Kirrow managed to clamp a hand over their mouth and left the pair of them thoroughly bruised from fists and feet. Afterwards, nursing their hurts, they wound their way back to the library, the time to have paid their dues for the dorms having come and gone. As they neared, a group of cadets disappeared around the corner at the far end of the hall. Something must have showed in Kirrow’s expression because Isket patted her on the arm, once. 

“Luck.” 

Hurrying as much as she could manage without causing a racket, she caught up with the group at the end of the hall, hanging two paces back. A boy limped along, held between two others, shock of wheat-blond hair crusted red. Shenen. Kirrow halted, considering. Cadets and recruits rarely spoke; if she struck now the rumour might be one of her own might, that she had been the one to inflict this injury. But the cadets would all know the truth, and if that did not buy her vengeance it at the very least showed her weak. 

“What are you doing here?” Larsey had spun around to face her and in the dark she loomed, the right half of her face moonlit and blood-splattered, and Kirrow remembered the weight of her body and the hard pressure of fingers against her wrists. 

“Nothing. I’m not breaking any rules,” said Kirrow. 

“You’ve been watching us all week.” Larsey stalked forward, dropped into a fighting stance. The others had gone. “You’re planning to fight me to make cadet? Big mistake.” 

“No,” said Kirrow, but she set her legs apart, arms up, and waited for Larsey to move. 

A gold token gleamed at her chest. In the enclosed space, Kirrow’s smaller size would be to her advantage. She darted forward, ducking under Larsey’s guard only to be met with kick in the chest — weak, without enough room to build momentum, but it stole her breath and knocked her back into the wall. She dodged out of the way of a second kick, darted backwards so that her back was to the entrance of the cadet dorms. Slipping inside, she pressed against the wall, listening to the soft sounds of sleep and Larsey’s footsteps. 

There were no windows in this room; no light at all but the reflected moonlight on the concrete of the hallway. A dark shape cut across the doorway. Kirrow lunged forward, ramming her heel into the back of Larsey’s knee. She pitched forward, landed on her hands and knee with Kirrow clinging to her back like a lemur. 

Larsey threw herself backwards. Kirrow struggled beneath the weight, tensed her muscles against it. Left arm pinned, she reached out with her right, fingers grasping handfuls of fabric, searching for a brush of metal. Finally she found it, pushed upwards against the ache in her chest as she closed her hand around the pin and yanked. 

All at once Larsey surged upright. Hand still wound tight in her shirt, Kirrow was dragged with her, balanced on the tips of her toes. She reached and grasped metal, pulled, Larsey’s nails biting deep in her hands as she struggled to wrench Kirrow’s fingers away. Fabric ripped. Her handhold gone, Kirrow dropped back onto the flats of her feet, sucked in a gasping breath, and ran. 

Dark walls blurred past, filled by the sound of footsteps and harsh breathing. She skidded to a halt by Drill Sergeant’s door. Larsey caught up as she knocked, tackled her into the frame with an arm pinned across her throat. 

“What are you two doing here in the middle of the night?” demanded Drill Sergeant. Kirrow held up the token and she heaved out a sigh, dragging battered hands first over her face and then her short-cropped hair. “Alright, then. Congratulations, Raecovin. There is one final test before you officially become a cadet.” 

***

Month of the Inventor fell in high summer, warm and damp even during the night. Larsey smiled, wide and strange, teeth gleaming in the lantern-light. Kirrow stayed half a step behind, fingers drumming against the hilt of her baton. A single cart trundled past. They moved steadily away from the centre of the city, the streets narrowing into a maze. Grubby street kids vanished from doorways as they passed, hurriedly tucking themselves back into alleys. 

“This isn’t where we’re supposed to be,” said Kirrow. 

“We will. I’m taking you on patrol first.” Larsey glanced back. “Scared?” 

Kirrow eyed the crumbling building fronts. After a month fighting former street kids, she did not like her chances against a whole pack. “No.”

“Good.” They halted at the mouth of an alley, positioned beneath a flickering lantern. “Go to the end of the alley and look through the window at the top.” 

Kirrow thought of the boy who had died in the well. Larsey stood at her back, eyes hard and shining, a look that promised Kirrow would not survive the night. She set off down the alley, resisting the urge to look back. A handful of paces later, she came to a dead-end, a mess of crates stacked against the wall. After a moment’s hesitation, Kirrow began to climb. At the top she sat, brick to her back, legs dangling out into the darkness. 

Voices drifted up from somewhere to her left. She stood, picked her way across the top of the wall. A window sat an arm-span above her head, boarded closed except for a gap at the bottom of the frame just large enough for Kirrow to squeeze through. She hesitated over her baton: whoever was inside would be used to cadets in their green jackets and shorts rather than the plain black of recruits, but the baton might tip them off. In the end she adjusted the holster so it rested mostly under the hem of her shirt, still within easy reach if she needed it. She boosted herself up, fingers clutched on the window frame, feet scrabbling at brick. 

Balanced against the wall, she peered between the boards. A collection of mismatched, rickety furniture filled the room beyond. Five kids near Kirrow’s age crowded at the centre, two arguing loudly over a third, who was buried beneath a pile of blankets. One glanced up, met her eyes.

“Cadet!” The boy charged to the slats, bat gripped tight in his hands. 

Kirrow nearly lost her grip. “I can help him!” 

“What?” 

Nodding towards the boy under the blankets, she said, “I can help him. My —” she paused, unable to think of a word to describe Dorist — “father ran a clinic. He taught me all about how to heal people. I can help him.” 

The boy pulled her in by the forearms. “What do you want?” 

Larsey must have known. She must have sent her to check the window knowing they would recognize her as a recruit, knowing they would want to hurt her. “There’s a cadet at the opening to the alley. She wants to kill me.” 

The group huddled up around their sick member. After a time, the boy and two of the girls climbed out through the slats. Kirrow went to kneel by the sick boy — a Borderlander with Midlands blood somewhere in the past few generations, perhaps a year or two her senior. His skin was the colour of putty and burning to the touch. 

“Is he hurt or just sick?” she asked the last of the group, who might have been the sick boy’s sister. 

“He sliced up his whole arm climbing back in a week ago, and he’s been feverish the last couple of days. We keep saying we need to fix it and get rid of the nails only we don’t have tools for it.” 

“Any medicine?” 

The girl shook her head. Kirrow peeled back the blankets to examine the arm. Someone had done a decent job of wrapping it, but the scratch, reaching from shoulder to elbow, had gone red and inflamed, leaking pus. She drained the wound, cleaned it, told the other girl to boil cloth for bandages and wrap it once they were dry. By then the others had returned, the boy sporting a split lip, one of the girls a swelling left eye. 

“She’s tough, your girl, but it’s done,” said the boy. 

“Thank you,” said Kirrow, then, gesturing at the sick boy, “I can’t promise anything.” She crossed back to the window, squirmed beneath the boards and out into the night air. There were some nights, Dorist used to say, when all you can do is push through to the end. 

***

Larsey lay on her side at the mouth of the alley, uniform torn, skin marred by deep bruising. Kirrow nudged her with the toe of her boot. When the other girl did not stir, she continued on, weaving back the way she came until alleys opened into streets and she came to a mudbrick house with a lantern above the door. She knocked, then knocked again, louder, when no answer came. Finally a man peered out, eyes rheumy, face sagging with age. 

“Are you Amarsec Genn?” asked Kirrow. 

The reply was slow in coming. “I am.” He held the door open no more than a crack. Kirrow extended her baton with the flick of a wrist. Genn’s eyes widened. He made to slam the door but her foot halted it progress. “You’re a cadet.”

“Not yet.” She forced her way inside. For a moment the entranceway distracted her: the place was well-lit, carpeted, the furniture constructed of a shiny dark wood, the walls lined in ornate paintings. She had seen nothing like it in Estamel, where everything was worn from age and use, the floors perpetually tracked with dust no one had time to sweep away. 

“Please,” said Genn, and she struck, felt something snap in his ribs. 

He cried out as he fell, lay curled on the perfect carpet with his arms up to shield his face. It was easy work, easier than it should have been, just the rhythmic rise and fall of her arm. Genn whimpered under her touch and she ignored it as she had always done, back in the clinic, let it fade from awareness like the buzz of flies on a hot day. She left him there on the ground, bruised and bleeding and still, and wiped her baton clean on the hem of her shirt. 

Outside, she meandered, let the warm night air wash over her as she made her way back to the compound. She had come to the end of something, though she could not say what; a gentle slipping of one phase of life to the next. A sliver of grey lit the sky by the time she reached the gates and showed her exit slip to the guard. The cadets on dawn patrol stood grouped by the entrance, rubbing sleep from their eyes. And beside them, Kel, chin resting on his knees, eyes closed. 

She almost walked past. It was over, this part of her life where she dragged him after her — but that was not correct. It was the days he chose her to follow that were over, for he would never do as she had done, would never look at her with anything but disgust in his eyes when he heard of it. Kirrow settled cross-legged on the ground across from him, their knees almost touching. 

“What are you doing out here?” she asked. 

Kel startled awake, blinked her into focus. “Isket said you went to fight. You didn’t come back after.” 

“I did,” said Kirrow. “I won.” She pressed the exit slip into his hands. “You were right, Kel. This place isn’t right for you. I don’t know where there is for you to go, but you’ll find somewhere, I think.” 

“What about you?” 

A brief smile. “I like it here,” she said. “It’s all strategy.” 

***

Drill Sergeant looked her up and down, critically. She’d changed into her day clothes since Kirrow had last seen her, brushed her short dark hair into order. “It’s done?” 

Kirrow shifted her weight, hands clasped behind her back. “Yes, sir.” 

“And Larsey?” 

“She showed me around the city. We ran into trouble. She was hurt and I couldn’t bring her back by myself.” 

A long pause, then, while Kirrow held perfectly still. 

“Very well.” Drill Sergeant turned, rummaged through a cabinet. 

Kirrow drummed her fingers against her baton. Finally, hesitantly, she asked, “What did he do?” 

“Genn? His factory was underproducing. I’m sure the new director will be inspired to do better.” She emerged with a cloth bag, dropped it into Kirrow’s arms. She pulled away the drawstring to find a set of plain clothes, dirt stained, blotched in places with old blood. After a moment, she realized these were the ones she had worn the day she came to Skanda. 

“The others are waiting for you in the courtyard,” said Drill Sergeant. 

Under the grey of false dawn, the cadets stood in a ring around the bonfire. The heat of it stole Kirrow’s breath as she came near but she advanced all the same, close enough to feel woozy. 

“Rid yourself of all that you were,” said Drill Sergeant, behind her. She set the bag in the fire, watched as it ate holes through the fabric. Then she took off her shoes and socks, her pants and shirt and her undergarments, set each item in the fire until she stood naked in its light, shivering despite the heat. The other cadets looked on, silent. Drill Sergeant stepped past her, gold token clasped between tongs, held it in the fire until it glowed hot and red. 

Kirrow screamed when the token pressed into her skin, searing the mark of sword and shield into her left shoulder, and for a time there was only pain, so deep for a moment she feared there would never again be anything else. When she returned to herself she knelt by the fire, the token water-cooled and clenched in her palm. As dawn turned to day they dressed her once more, in green instead of black, a gleam of gold at her chest.


	6. Mr. and Ms. Avaneth Come to Cenneten

_Four hundred years before the fall of the gods, the Thief and the Judge met for the first time in many centuries. In that time, the Thief had not been seen by any of the others, and among mortals they had become no more than a legend, though in truth the Thief lived among them, having taken no permanent face nor established temples in their own honour. The gods thought them dead, though none knew if this was possible, or lost — that the Thief had found, perhaps, a route back to wherever they had come from, though none were not sure such a place existed._

_The Thief and the Judge met at an inn, one of the two-storey wood structures that sat along the Grand Highway spaced apart by a day’s travel. Some say it was a meeting of coincidence: their eyes met and they knew each other instantly for what they were, as the gods always did. Others charge collusion and conspiracy, that the Thief’s long absence had been in service of the aims of the Winter Alliance and the Judge who was their leader. There is, of course, a story that is true, but no one else will ever know it._

**Month of the Merchant, 814**

It was midnight, and none could sleep for the sound of wailing. Javin stared up at the ceiling, squeezed between his younger sisters on a too-small bed. On the side nearest the wall, Kindra had curled herself beneath the blankets, hands over her ears, hidden but for the top of her wispy white-blond hair. 

To his other side, Aslyne whispered, “Can’t you make her stop?” She pressed cold toes into his leg. “Please? I don’t want to listen to her until father gets back.” The wailing rose in volume. “You have to. You’re oldest.” In the other room, something shattered. “Kindra will start crying soon.” 

Their sister was trembling now, a minute vibration under the covers. Javin climbed out of bed and went into the other room, closing the door behind him. He blinked against the light: glowing mechane butterflies perched on chairbacks and tables, fluttered in packs up towards the ceiling then swooped for the floor. One perched in his hair, another on his shoulder. 

Esthari had dragged a chair to face the full-length mirror and there she sprawled, dark hair hanging in waves almost to the floor, white silken robe thrown open to reveal olive skin. Glass glittered along the carpet by the wall, beads of wine dripping down to soak into the fibres. Still she wailed, loud and desperate as four-year-old Kindra when she lost her grip on her favourite doll and sent it spiralling down over the edge of a bridge to be sucked away by the currents below. 

“Mother, stop,” said Javin. 

Esthari turned in her chair to face him. Earlier she had painted her eyes with kohl; now it left long black streaks over her skin. 

“I was in the theater, as a girl,” she said, eyes drifting back to the mirror. She traced a finger over her sharp jut of ribs, then down to her stomach, marked by the birth of three children. “A prince offered to bring me to the palace, so my beauty might bring light to his life. In every town I turned down offers of marriage. Oh, I should never have left those days.” Head sagging backwards, she watched Javin pick glass from the carpet. “Listen to me, love. They wear you away, children. Wear you right away.” 

She made an odd snuffling sound — she’d fallen asleep, head hanging over the arm of the chair. Javin finished gathering the last of the glass. He dumped it in the bin, filled a pail with water to wash away the wine stains. Two buckets later, hands cold and cramping, the worst of it had washed away. On the way back to the bedroom, he paused to tie closed Esthari’s robe and drag over a second chair to drape a blanket over the mirror. Then he went back to bed, squeezing in beside his sisters as they snored, already deep asleep. 

***

His father was not a quiet man: loud footsteps heralded his arrival, booming laughter and jovial conversation, then finally the impact of door against wall when he threw it open with a flourish. Perched on the windowsill to catch the early morning light, Javin ignored the racket in favour of the set of lockpicks arrayed across his knees. Voices drifted in from the next room. 

“Vander, what a mess I have made of myself without you,” said Esthari. 

“Never, my dear,” said Javin’s father. “You are to me as the ocean — there is naught but beauty in your rage.” 

Javin picked a lock from his collection and held it up to the light: a simple pin tumbler mechanism. He considered his tools, ran his fingers over them one by one. 

“My buttercup, you are quite simply ravishing,” continued Vander. His voice was closer now, just outside the room. He threw open the door with his customary flourish. “Children mine, how fare you all this fine morning?” 

A large, rounded man, he swept into the room with surprising lightness. Seeing the girls still in bed, he chuckled. “Why, such a pack of lazy reprobates I am raising! Come, children. The sun is out, there is business to be done!” With that he tore away the blankets, lifted Aslyne and Kindra by the ankles to dangle upside-down. Nodding at Javin, he said, “lazy reprobate the first. Industrious as always.” 

“Contradiction,” said Javin. “Lazy means not willing to work. Industrious means working hard.” 

“Ah, but there you are wrong, my son — do we not contain multitudes? With your lockpicks you are industrious indeed, but do I see you out selling these charming butterfly lights? No I do not! An industriously lazy reprobate indeed!” 

Javin wrapped up his tools and stowed them in a pocket. In the other room, he found Esthari dressed in a pin-striped black vest and matching pants, hair elaborately braided and tucked away under a hat. Butterfly lights fluttered down to settle on the brim that shadowed her face, hiding the red that rimmed her eyes despite their lining of fresh kohl. 

“Don’t I look a proper merchant, love?” she asked. 

“Not proper. Our sort,” said Javin. 

“It’s the same thing, love.” 

Vander swept in, then, blond hair dyed freshly black — he and Esthari both were Evatan Midlander by ancestry and Talthan by birth, but only he had inherited light hair and eyes to set him apart from his countrymen. Aslyne and Kindra shared his colouring, though the former’s red hair and green eyes spared her the ordeal of hiding it; she had the look of nobility rather than of a foreigner. 

Vander stood by the open window as he waited for his hair to finish drying, then swooped down to kiss Esthari on the cheek. “Time to go, my honey bird.” He traced a circle with one finger on the opposite palm, held it open to the sky. “May the Thief lighten our hands and the Bard sweeten our voices.” 

Esthari brushed away a butterfly light as it landed on her sleeve. To Javin, she said, “I cannot bear the melancholy of these lights any longer. Please, have them gone.” 

“No less than a copper apiece,” added Vander. “And the Merchant’s blessing to you in your venture.” 

***

Nearly an hour later, Javin caught the final mechane, balanced with one foot on the table and another on the back of a chair. Wire wings batting at his fingers, he dropped it into the box in Kindra’s lap. Wrapped in gloves and jackets, they headed out, footsteps crunching on clumps of hailstones not yet melted from the tresset three days previously. 

Esthari and Vander had spent the last of the money from the previous job on a room in the better part of Cenneten, where snow-covered lawns framed stone houses with arched windows and factory owners streamed past in long red and orange jackets that were the fashion of the season. 

They set up in a grassy stretch of parkland, the girls side-by-side in a halo of fluttering lights. Javin hung back a pace with a net to scoop up the lights when they strayed too far. A lady in a frock coat stopped first. She held out a hand, gasped when one touched down. She bought five; Javin sealed them in a mesh bag. A man bought two, one each for his little children, a butler half the stock for the master’s dining room. When the crowds tapered off late into the morning, they moved father into the heart of the city, lingering between storefronts. 

Merchants loved to haggle and Aslyne, all of seven years old and vicious, haggled back. Words came to Javin poorly in the best of times; under the pressure of flurried negotiation they slunk away to the shadows, leaving him dry-mouthed and silent. 

By mid-afternoon the last of the lights had been sold off. The three children sat together on the stoop of an abandoned storefront, resting their sore feet. A porter stood outside the inn opposite, a boy near Javin’s age who piled trunks into wheeled carts. Aslyne nudged him in the arm. 

“Let’s go back.” 

The boy accepted a gold-inlay trunk from a pair of men in silk. “Not yet.”

***

Kindra darted up the street in her shirtsleeves, hair wild, eyes wide in mock distress. Javin and Aslyne watched from down the block, holding her overcoat. 

“Excuse me,” said Kindra, in that carefully articulated way their parents taught when they were young, so strangers would not get lost in the mushy jumble of child-words. “Excuse me, your mother said run tell you she’s hurt, she’s hurt very badly and needs you to come to her.” 

The boy dropped a case on his foot. “My mother? What happened? Where is she?” 

“I don’t know, only she’s at your home and she needs you to come to her.” 

“I can’t get fired,” the boy said. 

“My sister is big and strong like you. She can do your job and give you the money after,” said Kindra. 

A moment’s hesitation more, then he handed his jacket to Kindra and took off. Aslyne took his place on the stoop while Javin settled Kindra on a chair in the entranceway, draped his jacket over her as she curled up to sleep. Aslyne collected a hefty carpet bag from an arriving guest; sagging under the weight she passed it and the master key to Javin. He hefted it over his shoulder, staggered, then set off. 

The inn held a servants’ stairway and a bell system — a good omen; the guests in such a place would have eyes accustomed to glazing over anyone in uniform, not to mention a network of hidden halls away from the public eye and a discreet exit into some alley. With some quick footwork kept him out of sight of the actual staff, he made it up to the fourth storey, panting slightly under the weight of the carpet bag. 

Inside the room he paused to take stock: embroidered bedspreads, carpet in the Sairiban style, fixtures bearing a coat of silver or gold over cheaper metal. None of it would make a great profit to pawn, so he turned his attention to the carpet bag, where he found two genuine spider-silk scarves, a handful of silver coins, enough clothes to wear a different set everyday for two weeks, and a couple of crumpled pulp novels. He took the scarves and the silver, and then, after a moment’s consideration, the books for Vander to read to the girls. 

Downstairs he tucked his prizes under the jacket where Kindra slept, collected the next bag, and headed upstairs. By the end of the night they had amassed a collection of knickknacks, none especially valuable alone but enough to earn a five silvers and a copper at the pawn shop a few blocks down. A skewer of glazed meat shared between them and they headed back to their inn, Kindra dozing on Javin’s back. 

***

“Where did those pretty lights go? The place is so terribly lonesome without them,” said Esthari. Kicking off her shoes, she draped herself over a chair. “Do you not think so, dear?” 

“My darling, my sweet winter lark, the blood that beats in my heart, how could I disagree with a word that passes your honeyed lips?” 

She and Vander had arrived home well past dark, wine-flushed and giggling, leaning tipsily into each other for balance. They had interrupted the girls in the process of readying themselves for bed and now they stood in the doorway in sock feet and nightshirts to see if this would be a night they got a bedtime story. 

Vander continued on, “but we mustn’t grieve, my first flake of snow. They are not gone, you see, simply imaginary.” He drew a hand through Esthari’s hair, rested it on the crown of her head. “Coppers and coppers where once there were lights, beauty exchanged for beauty but this beauty buys food where the other buys naught but light.” 

“Food?” asked Esthari, vaguely. “Good, I hope. None of that peasant fare.” 

“No food,” said Javin. 

Esthari went to the kitchen, where she pulled down a bottle of amber liquid from the top cabinet. “Whiskey, then.” She poured five glasses and beckoned them over to collect. 

Glass held delicately between his palms, Javin inhaled the scent, coughing when it burned. Vander slapped him on the back. 

“Drink up, drink up. Fling away your childish souls and become for the night adults.” 

Javin drank. He did not feel like he was flinging away his childish soul. Mostly he felt sick, unbalanced like he suddenly stood on the deck of a ship. Kindra took a tentative sip, eyes watering at the taste; Aslyne replaced her own drink untouched and led her off to bed. 

“And now, the matter of greatest import,” said Vander. Face flushed, he’d rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbows and thrown open his vest. “Money, of course, is that not the crux of it all? What winnings have you for me today?” 

Javin fumbled at his pockets. His hands felt remote, wrongly shaped, like someone had cut off all his fingers and sewn new ones in their place. Finally he unearthed all the coppers, placed them in a pool on the table. 

“I was in the theater as a girl, you know,” said Esthari to the kitchen cabinets. “We hung the stage in shards of glass, and all our cuts glittered.” 

***

Javin woke with a headache, a sour taste in his mouth, and an empty apartment. He cleaned up from breakfast, washed the dishes and ordered the chairs back into place, scrubbed soap into the last remnants of the wine stain on the carpet. Then he forced down a meal of his own — Vander insisted this helped after he had been drinking —, shrugged on his coat and headed out. The weather had warmed some, sunlight melting away the last traces of winter. 

Javin set up a shell game in the commercial district, keeping an eye out for his sisters and for the constables but not particularly worried about either: the former knew how to look out for themselves and the latter more likely to let him off with a warning than a proper charge. _A respectable-looking girl or boy,_ Vander would sometimes say, _can rob a man blind right under a constable’s nose right until they’re twelve or thirteen years old._

Feeling slightly more human, he used his winnings to buy lunch, then tested his lockpicks on the side door to one of the abandoned factories until the rusty metal of the doorknob came apart in his hand. By sunset he still had not seen his sisters — unusual but not unprecedented, especially in a town the size of Cenneten. First back at the inn, he turned what food he could find in the cupboards into something resembling a meal, and ate it alone at the counter. 

With the dishes cleaned and put away, the table and counter gleaming, and the wine stain faded to a pink splotch from a final soap, he laid out his lockpicks all in a row on the bed of the room he shared with the girls. Set the rakes to one side; these were easy and fast and not much use on anything complex. He chose a lock, simple, to warm up. Tension wrench set, he selected a hook and slid it into the mechanism, pressed at the key pins one at a time until he felt the pressure release and the plug turn. 

One by one he worked through his locks, from easiest to hardest, as the sky darkened and Vander and Esthari clattered home. Locks and picks ordered and stashed away, he rose to close the curtains, quiet so as not to wake the girls — but the bed was empty. A quick search revealed them nowhere else in the suite. Reflexively, he wiped away the mess Esthari and Vander had made in the kitchen upon their return, shrugged into his jacket, and headed out into the night. 

Cenneten’s richer neighbourhoods were organized on a grid, so he wound his way through, marking the buildings at either end with a circle in chalk. A message to his sisters, if they saw it: _come home._ He walked the length of the mercantile district, then crossed the bridge to the factory district under the rising sun, marked the pillars at either end, and retraced his steps. A chalk circle inside the one he had drawn would signal his sisters had seen his message and were following his instructions; a line meant they could not and showed the direction they had gone, but each one he passed was unmarked. 

***

Javin completed his third lap around the constabulary and tucked himself into the alleyway opposite. There were two guards he could see, one by the sole entrance, another pacing the perimeter. None of the windows opened, which meant no locks to pick. Breaking a window would be too loud. Slowly, Javin walked the length of the alley, pulling on his gloves as he searched for anything of use. He found a long shard of pottery from a broken plate and tucked it into his pocket. The guard made another pass. Javin waited until she was out of sight before he strolled across the alley. 

Old, cracking putty held the windows in place, flaking away easily under his improvised blade. White flakes drifted to the ground, speckling his shoes. He counted down the seconds until the guard’s rounds brought her back to his side of the building. At the sound of approaching footsteps, he darted away, crouched between an old sofa with a broken leg and a crate heaped with trash, sleeves over his mouth to block out the smell. The guard walked past. Javin resumed his scraping, felt the edge of the pottery crumple. He brushed away the detritus and kept going. 

All at once the window sagged, the last of the putty on the right side of the frame giving way entirely. Two minutes before the guard would circle around again, and when she did she would be sure to notice the damage. Javin pressed his full weight against the glass, ancient wood creaking from the pressure. It gave with a splintering crunch and tumbled inside the building, the fall too short to shatter the glass. 

His two minutes were almost up. Javin vaulted over the windowsill to find himself in some sort of file room, surrounded by tall metal shelves: a moment of serendipity. He set the window back in the frame, where it wobbled for a moment then settled in precarious balance. He turned back to survey the shelves, optimism quickly evaporating: rows and rows of shelves and he had no idea where the they would record two little girls picked up off the street. It would be faster to check the cells first — constabularies tended to share a layout, one Vander and Esthari had all their children memorize. 

The window came loose with a solid thunk. This time, the glass failed to withstand the impact. Caught between the impulse to run and the impulse to clean, Javin stood frozen. Outside, the sound of running footsteps grew louder. He glanced at the door. The constabulary beyond would be full of people he did not have time to plan how to avoid. A calm, empty feeling settled over him, though his heart still beat frantically in his chest. As the guard’s silhouette appeared in the window, he pulled a box of files from the shelves, scrunched himself into a ball, and fit himself into the space. Footsteps faded in and out as the guard paced through the room. 

“Hey, buddy, what are you doing down there?” 

Javin unfolded as much as he was able to find the guard crouched at his side. She reached out to touch him on the shoulder, only to draw back when he shied away. 

“Don’t worry. No unauthorized touching, I got it.” Cross-legged on the floor, she shuffled backwards. “How do you feel about coming out of there to talk? It can’t be very comfortable, all squished like that.” 

Javin slid out of the shelf. 

“So. What brings you here, and why couldn’t it come through the front door?” 

“Sisters,” said Javin. 

“Your sisters? What about them?” 

“Here?” asked Javin. 

“Do you think they might have been arrested?” asked the guard. When Javin only shrugged, she pushed herself to her feet. “How about this? You look tired, so we’ll go find you somewhere to rest, and while you’re doing that I’ll check our records for your sisters, maybe send a runner out to our other two locations if they don’t turn up here. How’s that? What are their names?” 

“Aslyne Avaneth and Kindra Avaneth,” said Javin. 

“Right, then. Let’s go.” 

***

Despite himself, Javin dozed on the threadbare sofa where the guard had stashed him in one of the spare offices. He woke wary and disoriented, huddled beneath a jacket he did not recognize, eyes flickering over the room in search of an exit point. There were none but a single door at the far end of the room. Which opened, just as he made to stand. The guard sat at the opposite end of the sofa. 

“Feeling better, honey?” Five seconds passed, and then, when it became clear Javin was not going to answer, she continued, “Now, for matters like this, usually we talk to the parents. Can you tell us where they are?” 

Another life lesson, there, drilled into Javin’s mind since he was old enough to talk. “No.” 

“You don’t know where they are?” They were equal distance from the door but the guard was taller and would catch him if he ran. Besides, he still did not know if Aslyne and Kindra were in the constabulary. “Look, honey, we’re all just trying to help you. Why don’t you let us do that?” 

“Sisters,” said Javin. 

“Honey, we’ll tell you and your parents all we know, okay? But first you need to tell me where to find them.” 

“No.” No one had forbidden him from leaving. Javin folded the jacket, set it on the top of the sofa. He climbed to his feet. 

“Honey, could you sit back down? There’s something I need to tell you that you might not be happy to hear, but I promise it’s for the best.” Javin sat. “I think you know your parents’ activities aren’t always legal. To put it bluntly, they’re scam artists — low down on our wanted list, but there. We can’t let you or your sisters go back to them.” 

“Where are Aslyne and Kindra?” 

“No one will blaming you for telling us about your parents. It’s the right thing.” 

“Where are Aslyne and Kindra?” 

The guard sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell you this.” She leaned forward. “Keep in mind we don’t know this for sure, but we think your sisters have been adopted. A woman came in with two little girls yesterday matching the description you gave. They wouldn’t answer anything about their parents, so we gave her the go ahead.” 

“Who?” asked Javin. 

“Now that I really can’t tell you. How about this? I’ll see if we can get word to her her girls have a brother. Maybe she’ll take you in, too.” 

“Who?” 

The guard shook her head. “We’ll have you down in a workhouse while we sort this out. In the meantime, honey, you practice those conversation skills.” 

_____

In the precious half-hour of free time between the end of the work day and lights out, Breneder drew. Teeth hastily cleaned, dressed in his sleep clothes, he smoothed out scraps of paper he had scavenged from the classroom and kept hidden between the mattress and bedframe during the day. He drew a field of stars, background shaded in with the nub of a pencil snuck away weeks ago, constellations drawn from old stories and those rare nights the wind blew the sky clear of smoke. By now he was almost finished, the page filled completely but for the final corner. 

The door opened behind him. 

“Roommate,” said Ms. Arla, the new matron, and he turned in surprise — they preferred to keep him alone, because of his tresset gift. No one ever believed him when he promised not to use it. 

The other boy was not tresset-born, as he had been expecting; nor, to Breneder’s eye, had he come from the streets. Even in the plain grey of a workhouse uniform, he showed the marks of regular feeding and proper grooming. From the olive of his skin he might have guessed him Talthan Indigenous, same as Breneder himself, but for the curling mid-brown of his hair and near-colourless silver of his eyes. He held himself stiff, hands at his sides, back straight, face perfectly expressionless. Breneder pushed himself to his feet and extended a hand to touch palms. 

“Hello! My name is Breneder. What’s yours?” 

“Javin.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Javin. I haven’t had a roommate in ages.” It occurred to him then he’d left his drawings in plain view on the floor and edged sideways to better hide them, but Ms. Arla seemed more focused on the new boy than on him. A sharp nod, then she turned and left, shutting the door with a snap behind her. Breneder gathered up his drawings, sat on the edge of the bed with them clasped between his hands. 

“Javin, can I ask you for a favour? I really don’t want you to get in trouble so I won’t be angry if you say no.” He took Javin’s silence for agreement. He held up the drawings. “Please don’t mention these to anyone? The paper’s only supposed to be for school, I shouldn’t have it in here. And I understand why, really, paper is expensive and there’s lots of us, but it feels… itchy, in my head, when I can’t draw for too long. I don’t know how to explain it better.” 

“Yes,” said Javin. 

“So you won’t tell?” 

“Yes.” He climbed into bed, facing the wall instead of the door — he must have come up somewhere safe. 

Breneder studied him a moment longer. Then he returned to his drawing.

***

Breneder dragged himself out of bed at the morning bell. There were times he thought of running away, if only to sleep in for a day or two. His new roommate did not seem to have the same problem: dressed, hair damp from a bath, Javin crouched by the window, examining the frame. 

“It doesn’t open, sorry,” mumbled Breneder, thick with sleep. 

“I know.” 

“Breakfast usually goes pretty quick. If you want to head down now while there’s still some of the good stuff, it’s in the room off the front door, you would have passed it yesterday.” 

Figuring Javin to be in need of some privacy after what must have been a tumultuous day — first-timers rarely found the workhouse to their liking, not to mention no one ever ended up there because of good circumstances — Breneder ambled down the hall to join the line to the showers. Three places up, Michekel glanced over at him, then leaned down to whisper something to Amberley. When they both looked over again, he offered a gentle smile. 

The other kids were afraid of him, sometimes, because of the white aura stone that hung at his neck and also because, as of the past winter, he topped Ms. Arla in height. It was a game, he supposed, like sneaking up to poke a bear, harmless enough if occasionally irritating, and certainly not cause enough to give anyone confirmation of their fears. Besides Michekel and Amberley would not try anything now; a disruption during the rush of shower-and-breakfast was liable to start a riot. 

Shocked awake by four minutes under the icy spray, Breneder bounded down the stairs two at a time, cursing himself, as he did every morning, for not having woken earlier. He’d just collected his plate — this featured beetroot rather more heavily than he would have liked — when he heard the shouting, not unusual in itself except the voices belonged to adults. Munching his beetroot, he went to investigate. 

Mr. Denner had cornered Javin in the entranceway, one hand wrapped tight around his arm. Javin himself stood tense, face blank as always, but it was plain he wanted to flee. 

“What happened?” asked Breneder, softly. The question had been directed at Javin, but it was Mr. Denner who answered. 

“This is none of your concern, Miredo.” 

“If he’s done something wrong, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. He’s new here, I can teach him the rules.” 

“I _said,_ it’s none of your concern, Miredo.” 

Breneder balanced his plate on the coatrack. “It’s just, I don’t think he likes you touching him.” 

“Miredo, this is your last warning.” 

“Please, sir, I’m sure he’ll —” he was going to say explain, but thought better of it — “not do it again, whatever it was.” 

Knuckles white where he squeezed Javin’s arm, Mr. Denner turned, face dark with rage, voice tight. “Are you using your tresset gift on me, boy?” 

Breneder shook his head, panicked. He held out his aura stone. “No, sir, look, it’s not glowing.”

Finally Mr. Denner released the boy’s arm, pushing him forward. “Fine. Explain it to him. And if I catch him breaking the rules again, it’s on your head. Both of you.” 

A crowd had gathered around them, a mix of staff and boarders. Someone whistled. Breneder’s face heated under the attention and he hunched in on himself, desperately wishing they would all go away. Javin came to stand beside him. Breneder led him from the room, past the cafeteria onto the still-deserted shop floor. 

“They’re not really strict about people leaving here, they just don’t want everyone to see you doing it, so you can’t go out the front door, or the windows,” said Breneder. 

“What is your tresset gift?” asked Javin. He had a flat, soft voice, expressionless to match his blank face, with the slightest hint of an unplaceable accent. 

“I can make people do things when I talk, but I don’t like to use it,” said Breneder. “Plus I’ll get in a lot of trouble, especially today.” 

“Show me,” said Javin. 

Not a command, precisely, just a poor grasp on words, or else on social niceties. And because the other boy had a bad day already, and a bad day before that, and maybe many more bad days leading up to that, Breneder nodded. He glanced around to confirm the room was still empty, then he tucked the aura stone beneath his shirt, though he could get in trouble for that as well, nearly as much as for using his gift in the first place. 

In all the years since he had used it last, Breneder had nearly forgotten the warm, golden thing in his chest that allowed him to put that extra thing in his voice. Slowly he drew it out, warmth spreading from his core down to the tips of his fingers and toes, until his body felt clear and light, like sitting in a warm bath. 

He said, “Put your hand on your head.” 

Javin took on a faintly dazed look, as if suffering from a lack of food or water. He put his hand on his head and stood like that for nearly half a minute, until his eyes cleared and he put his arms back at his sides. 

“Sorry,” said Breneder. “Are you okay? I don’t think I should have done that, I’m sorry.” 

“Okay.” The room began to fill as the quicker eaters filed in from breakfast and took their seats. Quietly, Javin asked, “how to leave here?” 

Breneder motioned for him to follow, winding his way to the isolated corner where he worked. “I can’t tell you now, but I’ll help you with it when there’s a good time.” 

***

Breneder had a vague memory of sneaking out of the workhouse at night during his younger years, but really the best exit strategy was to volunteer for the pick-up and delivery crews, so long as you didn’t run off with anything — the way Amberley told it, her cousin had been beaten by the constables and thrown in prison for selling off a ham he’d been sent to pick up from the butcher’s instead of returning bringing it to the workhouse. The Matron and her assistants were, after a period of hesitation, always eager to send Breneder out for pick-ups and deliveries. He suspected they were hoping he would run away. 

After lunch — during which Javin had, silently, placed an extra slice of fried bread on Breneder’s plate — they dropped off a box of tie pins at the pawn shop a few blocks down, then headed south. Soon, they reached a part of the city Breneder had never seen. The streets were paved, cobblestones swept clean, and around some buildings were fenced-in islands of greenery, flowers and shrubs and trees in neat little plots. He might have gawked, if not for Javin’s rapid pace. 

By the time they reached a neat, brick-front inn, Breneder had shed his coat despite the cool air. He had no time to gain back his breath before Javin pushed inside. They stood out horribly in their dusty clothes, but the desk clerk seemed to recognize Javin, sliding a key silently in his direction as he passed. This unlocked the only door on the third storey. 

The suite inside comprised a large main room, decorated in a lot of shimmering white and silver, a small kitchen, and two bedrooms. Javin scrubbed down the kitchen in a businesslike fashion — Breneder wondered if he had been hired to clean until he slipped into one of the bedrooms and came out in clean merchant-dress. 

Breneder he dressed in what seemed to be women’s clothes belonging to someone tall but thin to replace his worn, oil-stained shirt; he fretted over it in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, afraid to pin up the fabric lest he damage it, and discomfited by his own reflection. 

The workhouse had mirrors, but these were of dented, water-spotted metal nailed above the bathroom sinks. He knew own face only as a muddy, distorted thing. In the clear glass he looked younger than he’d thought, but stronger, too, muscled where he thought himself an ill-defined bulk, and he found himself ashamed: this was why the other children were afraid of him. He looked like he could break most of them in half. 

“Javin, where are we going?” Breneder asked, to distract himself. 

“Registry,” said Javin.

“Do you know where it is? I don’t know if you’re from the city so I might have been here longer, but I can’t really help you get around anywhere but the factory district. Sorry.” 

“Yes,” said Javin, though Breneder was not sure in response to what. Maybe to say he knew where to find the registry, because they headed back out after that. 

***

Another round of speed walking brought them to a district of buildings the size of factories but with none of the smoke or concrete: for the most part they were sandstone, with rows and rows of arched windows. The registry was, in comparison, underwhelming, tucked away at the side of a larger building. Javin found a patch of grass with a clear view of the entrance and sat down. Breneder stretched out next to him, fingers combing through the grass, damp from the earlier rain. The sky was clear and blue, the smoke of the Soots no more than a hazy film. 

“Probably I should have asked this earlier, but what are we doing here?” asked Breneder. 

“Breaking in.” 

“That seems really dangerous. Are you sure it’s the only way to do… whatever it is you’re doing?” Javin did not answer. His eyes were still fixed on the front entrance. “What are we doing here?” 

“Find who adopted my sisters,” said Javin. 

Breneder stood, held out a hand to pull Javin to his feet, which he ignored. “I have a better idea. Can you cry on cue?” 

***

Javin could not, but Breneder had no such limitation: halfway across the street to the registry, his eyes got wet and shiny, his face pinched and trembling. They went in the front door, straight to the reception desk. Breneder wiped at his eyes. 

“Hello, ma’am. How are you today?” 

“Well enough. What can I do for you boys?” 

Breneder sniffled, ducked his head to wipe at his eyes. “Never mind. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” 

“What is it?” asked the clerk. 

Breneder paused, and then he said all in a rush, “It’s just, our sisters were adopted a few days ago, and I know you can’t tell us who has them, and we’re sure their new family is lovely. The thing is, my brother’s… delicate, a bit, he’s in shock, and I know it would help so much if he knew who was taking care of them, even if we can’t see them again ever, so at least we can write, and they’ll know we love them and didn’t abandon them.” 

Javin flinched back under the torrent of words, at the fat tears that rolled down the face of this other boy who was practically a stranger. Something boiled inside of him, locked him up tight. It was not his place to cry over this. It was not his place to cry over two girls he had never met. To make these claims about Javin that were false. He was not delicate. He was not in shock. But the hard, angry thing inside of him dried out his throat and scoured away his words, left him standing there frozen while Breneder cried his crocodile tears. 

“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” Breneder was saying. “I don’t want to be any trouble.” 

“That’s all right,” said the clerk. She rubbed a hand along the ridge of her brow. 

Breneder scrubbed away his tears, put a hand over Javin’s shoulder, not quite touching. “They’re safe,” he said, just above a whisper. “I’m sure they are. They have to be. Come along.” 

But Javin could not move, rooted as he was by anger and uncertainty. They should have broken in as he had planned, used Breneder’s tresset gift in case they were discovered. Not this, whatever Breneder was attempting. The hand pressed lightly on his shoulder and he jolted away, moving stiffly for the door, the other boy trailing behind him. 

“Wait,” said the clerk, and they stopped in their tracks. “I can’t tell you where your sisters are, but if you write a letter I can find the address and send it to them.” 

“That’s very kind,” said Breneder. He glanced over at Javin. “Very kind. It’s only… We’d really like to see them in person, to make sure they’re happy.” 

The clerk shook her head. “Sorry, kids. This is the most I can do.” 

They retreated to a corner with their borrowed pen and paper. 

“Make her,” whispered Javin. 

“I can’t, I’m sorry. Not on her, she’s just trying to do her job,” whispered Breneder. “You can write them something, at least.” 

Javin drew a circle. 

“What does that mean?” 

“Come home.” 

Then he reached around and untied the cord holding Breneder’s aura stone, folded it into the letter, and dropped both in the envelope. He handed it to the clerk. 

Outside, Javin bought lunch and they ate it together on the grass within view of the registry and, more importantly, the mailbox out front. The street had quieted some since their entrance, a lone man or woman in merchant-dress hurrying past every few minutes. 

“Do you want to play a game? It will probably look less weird if we seem like we’re doing something,” said Breneder. “How about one of us chooses a word, and then you act it out with your hands and the other person guesses what it is?” 

***

The sun had begun to set and Breneder was five minutes into an unsuccessful rendition of an owl when the clerk emerged. 

Javin said, “Urn?” 

“No, it’s an animal.” They watched as she dropped letters into the box and walked away. 

“What animal?” 

“It was supposed to be an owl. I’ve never seen one in real life.” 

“Bad job,” said Javin. He checked down the road on either side before kneeling by the mailbox and laying out a canvass roll of narrow metal tools on the ground. Two he stuck in the lock, the rest he rolled back into the canvass and tucked in his pocket. Breneder watched, caught between fascination and terror, as he picked the lock. It felt like a very long time before the front of the mailbox popped open. Javin looked at him expectantly. 

“What do you want me to say?” whispered Breneder, though there was no one close by. 

“Doesn’t matter,” said Javin. 

Breneder reached for his gift. “Sit down,” he said, which he hoped would not be too strange to be ordered about. A white glow emanated from one of the letters near the top of the pile. In a deft movement, he slit it open with one of the lockpicks — the paper tore, slightly — and fished out Breneder’s aura stone. They sealed the envelope, memorized the address written on the front, and closed the mailbox. 

“We need to go back to the workhouse,” said Breneder. “Tomorrow you can go find your sisters. I’d like to help, if you want me to.” And then Javin would be gone, and he would be stuck alone in the workhouse until the year ran out and he reached his twelfth birthday and they sent him to one of the factories until he was old enough to get shipped off to the war. He would draw Javin, when he got back to the workhouse. Him and his sisters, if he ever saw them, reminder of this family he helped reunite. 

Javin led the way back to the inn. Breneder followed him, only partly because he thought he had a better chance of finding his way back to the workhouse from there. He lingered outside the door — likely it would be his only day of excitement for quite some time, with no company but Michekel and Amberely and their tricks. 

“Inside,” said Javin. “Stay here. Easier.” 

Breneder took another shower for the sheer luxury of the experience while Javin cooked dinner — this consisted of thinly sliced fruit and hard crackers packed with nuts. Breneder’s rapid wiping down of the kitchen afterwards was apparently unsatisfactory, because Javin went through and cleaned everything again. They’d just finished when the door was thrown open to reveal a man and a woman, the latter rosy-faced and round, the former dark haired and bony, both similar enough in appearance to Javin that they must have been his parents. 

The woman looked him up and down. To Javin, she said, “Love, have you made a friend?” 

“Useful,” said Javin without looking up from his roll of lockpicks, but there was a touch of warmth behind his customary blandness. 

The man ambled over. “A fine, strapping lad indeed. What talents have you?” 

“Tresset gift,” said Javin. 

“Ah yes, that I do see, and dangerous indeed, by the colour of that pendant.” He waited. “Don’t be shy, boy, let’s see it.” Breneder demonstrated. The man clapped his hands. “My, that is lovely, truly lovely indeed. Good use we shall make of you, that I promise.” 

“I don’t use it on people,” said Breneder, and in his mind’s eye he saw this foggy potential future slip away like sand between his fingers. “I’m very sorry, sir.” 

The man waved a hand. “Naturally, naturally. Now off to bed with the pair of you — big plans for tomorrow, I’m sure.” 

***

Breneder sprawled. He’d started the night tucked in on himself on his side of the bed, but Javin woke with the other boy’s shoulder on his chest. Waking him proved difficult; jostling had no effect and a glass of water emptied over the face proved a temporary measure. He hauled Breneder out of bed by the arm, then to his feet before he could fall back asleep. While he was in the shower — he did not subscribe to Javin’s philosophy that cleaning should be fast and efficient — Javin constructed breakfast out of the leftovers from the night before. 

“Sorry, I think I used all the hot water,” said Breneder, shoulders dusted with water dripping from his bristly dark hair. He took a plate. “Thanks for cooking so much, you’re really good at it. I haven’t cooked in ages, and even before that I wasn’t very good at it, but also I was six, and I don’t think anyone is good at cooking then. They don’t let us cook at the workhouse. Which is probably a good idea.” 

Javin hummed at him, vaguely — according to Vander, people couldn’t tell someone was listening unless they made noise. Breneder did not seem to expect him to say anything back, or at least he did not leave any of those terrible stilted pauses in speech. When he had finished eating — this took some time, because he spent a lot of time talking — Javin quickly removed his plate before he could take it into his head to wash it himself. 

They left as Esthari and Vander rose, clumsy and discomfited from drink, calling their usual blessing as the door shut. Breneder fell silent as they walked, staring at the houses to either side. The address they had gotten off the letter brought them deep into the wealthiest part of the city, where the houses were framed by steel gates and lawns large enough to hold another house. 

They came far enough from the city’s centre he’d started to consider turning back to hire a cart when the house came into view. A mansionlet, undoubtedly housing a small army of staff to risk spotting them. 

They could wait until late at night, when even the servants would be asleep, sneak his sisters out through the window and down the rough brickwork. A place like this might have magical traps — he knew the theory for disarming those, contemplated the option as he walked. It did not sound especially hard when he read about it, and he’d long dreamed at trying his hand. He might have done it, despite the easy answer walking at his side, if it were not Aslyne and Kindra who were at stake. 

To Breneder, he said, “get us in.” 

***

Long ago Breneder had built a wall from a promise he barely understood, hands clasped in his mother’s weakening grip as she died, listening to the melody of his mother’s voice as she asked him this one last favour. The wall had grown higher with each fearful glance at his aura stone, fueled by the ever-growing conviction this part of himself would wither away and die in his chest. And then he’d gone and tunnelled underneath with barely a protest, turned those last words he had spoken to his mother into a hollow farce. 

But it was for a family. For two little girls who would lose their parents and their brother as he had lost his own family, who would watch them fade to kaleidoscope faces as age tore through memory like wet paper. Kerra would not know. Didn’t that make it worse, to break pure faith? To betray someone who could not punish that betrayal? 

He wanted to cry. He’d frozen in the street, hands shaking. Javin watched him with those cool eyes, patient. Breneder strode forward, heart hammering against his ribs. He came to a halt at the front door. Raised his fist. Knocked. It was the butler who answered. 

Before he could change his mind, Breneder said, “let us in.” The aura stone glowed as the butler stepped aside. To Javin he whispered, “we don’t have long before it wears off and he’ll know what I did.” 

Fluttering lights in the shape of butterflies fluttered around the entrance, delicate constructions of wire that settled on the banister of a sweeping staircase carpeted in red. A rumble of adult voices came from somewhere deeper in the house. They crept up the stairs. 

Though he trembled with adrenaline, Breneder still had the presence of mind to appreciate the beauty of the place, all high ceilings and painted walls and vibrant carpet. He’d live somewhere like this, if he could. Javin pressed his ear against the nearest door, then pushed it open. The room beyond — an assortment of chairs, sofas, and tables — was deserted. Breneder did the same with the room across the hall, which seemed to serve the same purpose. 

Javin waved waved him over and he pressed his ear against the door. A woman’s voice drifted through the wood, followed by that of a young girl. Their eyes met — they did not have long before the guard shook off the hypnosis. Breneder took a breath and knocked. 

The woman who answered must have been a caregiver of some kind; a young Borderlander in an apron over a plain dress. After a moment’s uncertainty, she bowed. Two girls sat on the carpet behind her, perhaps seven and four years of age, the elder red haired and the younger brunet, though it was a strange colour, like fading dye. 

“We’re sorry to bother you, miss. These girls are my friend’s sisters. Your employer told him he could say goodbye.” 

“I have heard nothing about this,” said the woman. 

“They must have forgotten,” said Breneder. 

“I am quite certain I would have been told.” 

“Hurry,” whispered Javin. 

It was easier the second time. Breneder said, “Go wait in an empty room.” 

The girls watched with wide green eyes as the caregiver hurried away. 

“Javin, what are you doing here? Who is this?” asked the older girl. Aslyne. 

“Retrieval,” said Javin. 

Businesslike, the younger girl stood, crossed the room, and hugged Javin around the legs. Then she did the same with Breneder. Cautiously, he placed a hand on her back, suddenly aware he had not been touched with such gentleness in years. His eyes stung. 

“I’m Breneder. What’s your name?” 

“My name is Kindra,” said the girl. “It’s very nice to meet you, mister.” 

Breneder found himself smiling despite his nerves. “Do I really look old enough to be a mister?” 

“Very old,” agreed Kindra. 

“Quiet,” said Javin. He circled the perimeter of the room, halted by the window to press his fingers against the pane. A commotion downstairs froze them all in place. 

“We can’t get out that way,” said Aslyne. 

The aura stone sat warm against Breneder’s skin where he’d tucked it out of sight beneath his shirt. He said, “It’s okay. I have a plan.” 

***

They marched out as a united front, four across on the stairs. Kindra had taken his hand, tiny, soft fingers engulfed in his, so delicate he feared he would crush them. With her other hand she held onto Javin, and he Aslyne. There was a crowd waiting for them at the door, the caregiver, a maid and the butler, and a man and a woman swathed in embroidered spider-silk and jewels, so rich even a factory owner would look drab in comparison. Breneder reached for the warm glow of his tresset gift. It felt weaker now, strained from unaccustomed use, and when he spoke it was only an undercurrent, a drop of dye in water. 

“Nothing is more important than family,” he said. As one all their eyes fixed on him, and under the weight he nearly quailed. “Don’t you agree? Isn’t that why you adopted these two little girls? But they had a family before you, and maybe it’s not as good, maybe they move around a lot and they let little children wander around in the street by themselves and they can’t afford all the nice things you can, but they’re family, and if they can’t say goodbye to that family they’ll never be properly part of this one, because there will always be an open weeping hole where their old family used to be, and nothing you do will ever close it. So we need to take them home, so they can say goodbye.” 

He stopped, light-headed, limbs heavy like they were full of lead. Somehow he made it down the stairs and out onto the street, the servants and the lord and lady parting before them. Somehow he made it back to the inn, half-asleep and shaking in the back of a penny cart, Kindra brushing worriedly at his hair. Somehow he made it up to the third floor, pausing at each landing, propped up against the wall, eyes closed, panting. They laid him on the bed, covered him in blankets. 

“Pack,” said Javin to his sisters. “Leave soon.” 

“I have to go back to the workhouse,” said Breneder faintly, past the ocean rushing between his ears. “Please, I have to …”

“No,” said Javin. 

“I need my drawings.” The ocean was getting louder, rushing and rushing, pulling him steadily toward the dark until finally it sucked him under. 

***

Vander carried him to the train, but Breneder found he could not appreciate the novelty of it. Grief had snuck up on him as he slept, raw as if he had lost his mother all over again instead of a lopsided face painted by a child’s hand, wrinkled and torn and unreproducible — he could make the strokes of paint easy enough, make something prettier, even, but it would not be the same, a painting of a painting instead of a painting of a face he no longer remembered. 

Javin settled across from him. For a moment it looked like he was about to speak. Instead, he took a familiar bundle of papers from his bag and settled them in Breneder’s hands. He held them tight as Kindra climbed into the seat beside him and laid her head on his shoulder.


	7. The Advent of Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pacing on this one might be a bit weird because one of my profs assigns a metric fuckton of readings each week and I only have time to write a depressingly small amount at a time. 
> 
> Also I'm not sure if anyone actually reads this far into the story, but at least I'm having a good time possibly talking to myself over the internet.

**Month of the Inventor, 815**

Janalack stepped off the realm-path to be met with a wave of heat. Within moments, her skin was slick from humidity. Turning back to the rent, she helped Viratel from the rocky ground they had been traversing into Kemataral’s main square, deserted under the noon sun. 

Viratel let out a contented sigh. “Now this is the temperature for old bones. None of that infernal cold.” 

“It’s not the right temperature for _my_ bones,” said Janalack. “I’m going to melt into a puddle and die. Promise to say nice things at my funeral?” 

“Stop it with your drama and help me, child,” said Viratel. 

With one arthritic hand, she took hold of Janalack’s arm. In the time Janalack had known her she had never been a large woman, but the years shrunk her further to something frail, sunken-eyed, plagued by stiff joints and dimming vision. She’d caught a cough early in spring, an irritant at first, soothed by a drop of tincture, then two, then half the bottle. By summer it had worsened to a fever — Janalack had returned from her latest exploration, two weeks previously, to find her mentor bedridden and delirious in a dank lodging house off the Vistoralan border. 

Three days in, sitting at Viratel’s bedside doing nothing more than stare down at her papery hands in a break in her research — Janalack had an itch, lately, the sense of some great discovery waiting to happen, only she could not say what precisely she was searching for — it occurred to her Viratel was far past the age of travel. So she wrote to her parents to ask if they still had that lake house, and if so, could she use it? The reply informed her, tersely, that Cassinat was to be married and she was welcome to drop by to discuss and arrangement. 

In the present, she said, “You’ll be okay here, right? I need to leave tomorrow, but I’ll have time to set things up before the wedding.” She glanced at her pocket watch. “Or after. Also I haven’t technically been kicked out of the family, so I can commandeer one of the servants to take care of you while I’m gone. They won’t be happy about it but you’re old so they should go along.” They reached the inn at the far side of the square; she held open the door for Viratel to hobble inside. 

The rooms here were better than she remembered: clean, simply decorated, without bugs or leaky spots or mold. She settled Viratel in bed, tucked the sheets securely around her — the old woman was shivering, despite the heat. 

“I’ll be back by evening,” she said. “And when I’m gone I’ll make sure there’s someone to come by every day, or more often if you need it.” 

“If there’s no dissuading you, I suppose I’ll be able to endure it,” said Viratel, without any real ire. 

***

The forest of Janalack’s childhood had been a wild, untamed thing, all endless, towering trees and overgrown paths. With seven years of true wilderness between now and then, it was decidedly less impressive: the path was packed dirt, any branch that grew too close hacked away. 

The first of the wedding pools sat half a reach in, occupied by Cassinat’s spouse-to-be — not, to Janalack’s surprise, the lanky, nervous boy who had been her betrothed but some tenth or eleventh daughter she vaguely remembered making the occasional appearance at their house in her childhood. Saranan must have soften over the years; once upon a time she would never have agreed to a match that could not produce heirs for the child set to inherit the estate. Janalack waved and carried on. 

She reached the second pool not long after. Cassinat and Nayonen lounged side by side, eyes closed, faces turned upwards to the sun. They looked at once more and less different than expected; older but not old — some part of her had been convinced they would look the same as the day she left. Janalack watched them for a moment longer, then she stripped off her clothes and cannonballed into the pool. 

“Cassia, guess who?” said Janalack, wading over to her sister. 

Cassinat stared, blinking, braced against the edge. Nayonen stood tensed at her side, eyes hard. “Janalack?” asked Cassinat, and then she surged forward, squeezed Janalack tight in her arms. Now she was the smaller of the two, soft where Janalack was callused and wind-burnt. 

She pulled away. “So… is mother mad at you about the whole, who you’re marrying thing? No cute little grandkids to inherit? Whatever happened to what’s his face, the one you were betrothed to? He seemed nice. Or he didn’t, I don’t remember much about him.” 

“Janna, you don’t want to hear about that. It’s boring stuff. Politics,” said Cassinat. 

Nayonen sneered, opened her mouth to speak. Cassinat shot her a warning look. “What she means is, it’s not your business.” 

Janalack shrugged. “Onto things that are my business! The lake house: how much do you think it would cost to buy and would mother and father let me have it for free, or at least a discount?” 

“I suppose I could talk to them,” said Cassinat. “It’s for your mentor, right? The one who’s sick?” 

“Why are you here, Janalack?” Nayonen interrupted, arms crossed tight. 

“Originally because of the lake house, but now I’m here, I want to see my big sister get married.” 

“You came to buy the lake house,” said Nayonen. 

“Leave it, Nayo, please,” said Cassinat. “I’m glad she’s here. Let’s talk about something else.” 

“I’m applying to the Academy,” said Janalack. “You know, in Sairiba.” 

“Really? Congratulations,” said Cassinat, without enthusiasm. “We’re proud of you, really. It’s just, isn’t it a long way, and dangerous? I read in the paper Evato and Taltha have the ocean full of warships out east.” 

“Through the realm paths it’s only a day or two of walking,” said Janalack. “I heard they let you do proper dissections, on people. The prohibitions here are ridiculous — this man in Evato nearly called the constables on me for offering to chop up his mother so I could find out what killed her. In hindsight I should have looked up a word in Marai other than ‘chop,’ but the point still stands. She was dead, it’s not like she could be offended by it.” 

Nayonen threw up her arms. “Of course we’re talking about the ethics of mutilating corpses! What else could I expect on _the day of our sister’s wedding_?” 

“Cassia said talk about something else. I’m talking about something else, aren’t I?” 

“Something else about you! Five minutes asking how we’ve been and then it’s all about you and your freaky research and your weird mentor and the resale value of a pig’s eye!” 

“Is it resale because someone already bought the pig, including the eye, and now the eye is being sold separately, or is it resale because someone bought the eye, minus pig, and is trying to sell it again? Because if it’s the latter, it depends on how it was preserved,” said Janalack. “Also I didn’t mention that.” 

Nayonen loosed a wordless snarl, made to lunge forward only to be halted by Cassinat’s headshake. She turned to Janalack, taking her hands. 

“Janna, you know we love seeing you.” She paused, thumbs running circles over the backs of her hands. “Today’s so busy, is all. You understand, don’t you?” 

“No, of course. I should get going, too; talk to mother and father about the lake house before I leave.” 

In the end, Janalack never went to see her parents about the lake house. She tracked down their business manager instead; bought a little place near the market and hired a servant to care for Viratel. She would like it better there, near a reminder of her old place of business. Janalack gave the boy her instructions while his gaze flicked between her and Viratel, silent in his judgement when she said she was going away. 

“I’m sure you know best, miss,” he said frostily. He lowered his voice. “It’s a great comfort to have loved ones near, towards the end. She won’t be more than a few months. I’m sure you can spare her that much.” 

“I promise I’ll visit whenever I can,” said Janalack. 

Outside, she stared up at the hill. Somewhere in that tangle of trees sat her childhood home, and in its yard, her eldest sister’s wedding. The air parted and she stepped through to another realm. 

***

Two days later, she stepped out of a lush green forest onto an endless field of ice. Squinting against the haze of snow, she made out the shape of a city in the distance, built low to the ground but for a single, towering stone spire. The sky above was a dull, sunless white, the air biting cold. Janalack donned her winter gear and pushed forward. 

Some time later, fingers and toes stiff, legs gone numb, she reached the city. Teveska was smaller than she had imagined, though it sprawled. Narrow footpaths wound between buildings, ridged where frost froze footprints in place. The few people she passed stared with open interest, and she stared back: the Sairibans were small and slender with skin of a strange translucent beige-pink and hair of blond or red or pale brown. From snatches of conversation she picked out a word or two; she understood written Ferakai well enough but had never heard it spoken. 

She came to the foot of the spire, pushed open the heavy double doors to a cool, squat room with a carpeted floor and walls draped in tapestry. A combination of luck and mediocre language skills brought her to the examination room some distance in the rabbit warren of the spire. The room was half-full and completely silent, most of the occupants Sairibans ranging in age from a few years her junior to a decade her senior. The other foreigners tended older and, by process of deduction, Talthan — they were larger sorts, a few shades paler than Janalack, not unlike the Borderlanders she’d run into on occasion in Evato. 

Janalack shifted at her desk. Over the years she’d bounced between scholars and universities, stayed a few weeks or maybe a month to devour whatever books she hadn’t yet read and pick the scholars’ brains, and then she and Viral were back on the road, her studies reduced to memories and scrawled notes. In that time she had written tests, but not many. The quiet was unsettling. She fought the urge to break it. Her written Ferakai came out messy and slanted, the letters unpracticed — she’d gotten into the habit of transliterating for her own notes, and by the time she finished the room was nearly empty. 

A clerk directed her down the hall to a room where a stern, dark-haired woman barked questions and pinched her lips at Janalack’s stumbled answers, and then, some five hours after it had begun, the ordeal was over. A reedy adolescent near Janalack’s own age appeared to shepherd her and the other foreigners through a maze of tunnels to their rooms. 

The space was small but tidy, a bed and a desk and a wardrobe wedged in. Grinning, Janalack flopped down on the bed, wrapping herself up in the quilts. Finally, a proper place to study, and maybe some day a degree to show for it. 

***

Sairiban children were eerily well-behaved, or at least far better behaved than she remembered being at their age: learning to write at three or four years old, she’d been a fast learner but rambunctious and impatient, serially disinterested in the rules of grammar the child-stories they forced upon her. Now, fourteen and sentenced to remedial language classes with a pack of toddlers, she did not fare much better. 

She’d learned cursive in her own language only so far as to allow a rapid, messy scrawl and had no intention of doing more in Ferakai. The teacher did not seem to agree: he’d traced out the letters in broad, clear strokes and demanded exact replication of his students. Janalack glanced down at her half-finished row of letters and groaned. She’d pick all of this up fast enough on her own; there was no need to waste her days in a room of infant clerks-in-training. 

“Turn to your partner,” said the teacher, who was called Kanevka. “One will perform their recitation while the other copies it down. Switch when you are finished.” 

Janalack ended up partnered with a scraggy little boy with bitten-down nails. He peered unabashedly at her notes and made a face like sucking a lemon. 

“I will trade with you,” he announced, enunciating very carefully. “I will write our recitations, and you will tell me about where you are from.” 

“How could I say no to that deal?” said Janalack. “I’m from Cepan. You know where that is?” the boy looked affronted. “I’ll take that as a yes. It’s very hot, there. And the air feels wet all the time, especially in winter — we don’t get any snow at all. Cepan is beautiful in a way that’s opposite to how Sairiba is beautiful: there’s so much colour, everywhere, and so many different animals. Once I found a beetle the size of a saucer with a whole mosaic on each wing.” 

The kid handed over the recitation, the writing neat but stilted, darker between the letters where he’d paused to think. 

“It is not so usual to prefer insects to people.” 

“It should be more usual. Insects are great. So are people, except they’re tetchy about being studied.” 

“Perhaps you lack subtlety.” 

“I haven’t found a way to do dissection subtly, but you never know.” 

The boy finished the second recitation, set it beside the first to study them both, cheeks sucked in. “At what age does one become satisfactory?” he asked. 

“I don’t know what that means,” said Janalack. She craned her neck to look over at the recitations. “But if you’re asking about you’re writing, I think it looks nice. I’m much older than you and my writing never looked that good.” 

“Surely it is not a matter of dexterity — does dissection not require care?” 

“Dissection is interesting and fun, and it’s only useful if you do it right. With writing it doesn’t matter how it looks as long as you can read it. There’s no point putting in all this effort.” She reached over to ruffle his hair, to which he responded with an indignant huff. “Why am I arguing with you? You’re practically a baby.” 

“And you are angry because you have not become significant.” 

“There’s no need to be mean about it. All I’m saying is I wasn’t eloquent at all at your age, and neither was anyone else I knew.” 

“Schooling in many places is not adequate,” said the boy. 

Janalack poked him on the forehead. “Or you have a good brain.” 

The teacher came over, then, and they both sat silent while he peered over the letters. A sharp whistle and his cane cracked down over the boy’s fingers, harder than Viratel had ever done in Janalack’s younger, incorrigible days. 

“You have not the talent to match your vanity,” he said. “It is offensive you think I would not see the marks of your hand in both.” 

The boy bit his lip, blinking hard against tears. When he spoke his voice shook, though he tried hard to hide it. “There is no efficiency in forcing Ms. Nabaran to do such exercises when she is not training to be a clerk. Is it not best I have the additional practice?” 

This time, when the cane cracked across his knuckles, he jerked away, gasping, face flaming red as he gasped against tears. Janalack rested a hand on his back. 

“I guess you’re not the meanest one here, after all,” she whispered once the teacher had moved past. He wrenched away, bringing his hands up to cover his eyes. Janalack took away her hand. 

“When I was little, my sister used to tell me all sorts of stories. I always thought it was stupid because they were never true. One time, she told me that at night the fish all grew legs and lungs, and they would climb out of the river and go around to all the houses to check if they were clean — she said they liked to steal things from the messy ones. I wanted to see one of these walking fish so badly I stayed up three nights in a row. When I found out she was lying so I would clean our room I was so mad I dropped all her clothes down the well and told her the fish did it.” 

“Perhaps it was meant as a metaphor for displacement: your uncleanliness made your room other than it should have been, just as growing arms and legs and lungs made the fish other than they should have been.” 

“I don’t think that was what she meant, but if you want to tell me more theories, I need a tour guide.” And like that Janalack made a friend, or some approximation of it. 

Teveska sat almost entirely below ground, a maze of tunnels and subterranean chambers. Most were scaffolded in metal, a handful had walls of plain ice. Janalack gaped like the tourist she was — surrounded by pale, light-haired Sairibans, there wasn’t much point in pretending the cool indifference of a local. 

She carried her little tour guide on her shoulders — he was called Avsera, with no surname in accordance to some Sairiban custom of childrearing — and he was making a valiant effort not to show how much he was enjoying himself. They came back aboveground at the edge of the city, headed out into the cold. 

In the distance the sky roiled, a mass of clouds in purple and grey-green, waves half as tall as the spire carrying islands of ice to the sky. Janalack had seen another section of the storm wall, not long after she began her apprenticeship. Standing on a cliff-top at the far southern edge of the larger of Cepan’s islands, she’d watched as waves of startling blue waves crashed into the sky. 

In the present, she asked, “What do you think is out there?”

Avsera tilted his head. “Stories. That is what there always is, before the truth is known.” 

“I think there’s more land,” said Janalack. “I’d like to explore it, someday.” She shivered. “Let’s get back inside. I want to see the famous library.” 

The library was a stunning construction for the volume of content if nothing else: it occupied the bottom part of the spire, shelves stretching up three or four storeys uninterrupted, wheeled ladders attached to the walls to grant access. Janalack felt a rush of intense gratitude she was not afraid of heights. 

“I don’t suppose we have time for a little exploration?” she asked. 

“By the time we reach the classroom, we will have missed the beginning of the lesson.” 

With the knowledge of all those books just sitting, waiting to be read, the lesson transformed from tedious to unbearable — she could not sit still, pen tapping relentlessly against the side of her desk, leg bouncing; her status as a visiting scholar left her exempt from many of the rules set for the Sairiban children, but each time the teacher stopped by her desk to find her staring off into the distance, she seemed to resist whipping her cane across Janalack’s knuckles only through immense force of will. 

***

The library consumed her, filled her with wonder that strained at her ribs, kept her hunched over tomes, fingers stained in ink, oblivious even to the aches of her body until she sat up and her spine crackled like dead leaves underfoot. She sat through remedial classes, at first, impatient and unfocused, sometimes an hour late or more, until the teacher lost patience and declared her caught up to be rid of her. Sometimes Avsera stopped by and let her talk at him — if she gave him something to do with his hands, he would sit for hours in her lap and listen. 

“When identical twins are born minutes apart, one during the tresset and one after its end, only the first has a gift. Isn’t that odd?” she asked him late one evening, when he’d begun to doze against her. 

“Rhetorical?” asked Avsera. She had taught him the concept of rhetorical questions near the beginning of their acquaintance, to stop him taking her monologues as research assignments. 

“Rhetorical,” she confirmed. “Everyone lives through two tresset-times before they’re born, but it’s only when you breathe outside air that determines if you have a gift. By then all the parts you’re ever going to have are there — not in their final form, but it’s past the point where anything is being added. So there’s something dormant inside most of us, something that can only be switched on in that very first moment of life. It means everyone has a tresset gift, but hardly anyone can use it.”

She stared down at a diagram of the human body, drawn and inked in meticulous detail. “I’ve read it’s in the blood, or the heart, or the brain,” she murmured. “What can be so different in any of those, between the first breath and the second?” 

Avsera did not answer. He had fallen asleep. 

***

Lectures were held in one of the few above-ground structures besides the Spire, in fire-warmed classrooms where they peeled off jackets like layers of an onion. Janalack found herself clustered around the fire with the rest of the foreigners: a ruddy-haired, olive-skinned woman who was either an Evatan Midlander or Talthan nobility; a pair of stout, wire-haired Vistoralans, nationality marked by a thick band of tattoos across both forearms; and, to her surprise, a Cepanese boy. The rest of the class was Sairiban, tending young and humourless. 

“I am here,” the instructor announced on the first day, “not only to instruct you on the many intricacies of the human body, but to teach you how properly to conduct yourself as befits an educated member of society.” 

Janalack fought a smile. This, at least, her mother would approve of — it was her dearest wish that everyone act as befits their station in society. It occurred to Janalack then that she had not told her parents or her brother of her plans, not that it especially mattered; if Cassinat and Nayonen had not passed the information along, she could do so herself when next she visited Viratel. Not that she had done that either, but she could hardly leave now that she had finally made her way into regular classes. 

Her mother’s lessons had not abandoned her completely. Janalack sat straight while she copied down diagrams and scrawled notes and called the instructor sir. She learned about the brain and how no one really knew anything about it, and the history of medicine — boring but required; she leant the instructor half an ear and read under the table —, and how to tell someone’s age from their bones and teeth. She trekked through the snow and ice alongside her classmates to watch autopsies from the other side of a window and listened for the reverberating clang of the storm bells that warned of incoming hail, fist-sized and deadly, prone to appear out of nowhere on a clear day. 

Summer in Sairiba was far from warm — asides from the sudden, deadly hail, it was prone to bouts of sleet and thin snow — but in comparison to Iban it was positively balmy. The first day of the tresset, the sky disgorged snow in massive clumps, drifts standing a man-height or more. Then the temperature dropped thirty degrees overnight. 

Dressed in every piece of clothing she owned, Janalack climbed to the wrap-around balcony that sat a third of the way up the spire, between the library and the staff offices above it. The cold bit through it all in seconds. But the sky was clear and cloudless for the first time since her arrival. 

“You ever miss home?” It took a moment for her mind to catch up — it was an islander dialect of her native tongue, Iomak. Janalack turned to find the Cepanese boy at her side, arms braced against the railing. A moments’ thought dredged up his name: Kari. 

“Home will always be there, so not usually. The weather might make me change my mind, if it keeps on like this.” 

Kari said, “me and Callien are going to the Docks Bar, later. Want to come?” 

***

Bars in ports were all more or less the same no matter where you went, and the Docks Bar was no exception. A dingy space, cast in the warm glow of twin fireplaces, Talthan sailors clumped together at the round tables, settling themselves in until the ice melted in spring. Callien and Kari staked out a place near the back. Callien offered a weak smile when Janalack pulled out a chair, lifted a hand from her glass to run it over her red hair. 

“I have been here three years, but the first day of Iban always makes me terribly homesick, knowing I have no choice but to be here another year.” 

Kari sighed. “I know what you mean. Even in high summer I don’t have much hope of ever going home, not until the war ends.” 

“Courtesy of my sister’s allegedly brilliant mind,” said Kari. To Janalack, she added, “she is the youngest general in Talthan history and keen that everyone know it, for all her false modesty.” 

“I missed my sister’s wedding.” said Janalack. A server had brought her spiced cider earlier her body had gone pleasantly fuzzy. “I didn’t go even though I was there in the city. She told me to go away. We always fight even though I haven’t done anything.” 

“Sometimes being apart fixes things,” said Kari. 

“All we do is be apart,” said Janalack. 

“There will be time to fix it later,” said Kari. “Come on, this is sad. Who wants to tell a fun story?” 

In the end they took turns complaining about remedial classes and the creepy little Sairiban kids, and the weather, and the way eyes tracked them in the streets. They complained, half-heartedly, of the readings and of winter hail, which Janalack had not yet seen but her companions claimed fell in sheets a forearm in length. 

“They’re not so shit about tresset-born here, though,” said Janalack, later, as they stumbled their way back to quarters. She tripped over her feet and sprawled, giggling, in a snowbank. Kari’s attempt to help her up landed him in the snow beside her. 

“You’re one? What’s your thing?” 

“I traverse the realms,” Janalack announced, floundering her way to her feet. 

“My sister would die of envy if she knew. She is forever searching out new talent to sacrifice to her army’s teeth,” said Callien. 

“I’ll keep it in mind if I ever need a job,” said Janalack. “I don’t have a plan for after this. Do you two have a plan? I feel like I should be better at plans.” 

“You’ll figure it out,” said Kari. “You’ve got all the time in the world.” 

***

On the final day of the tresset, Janalack found herself in a round, firelit office on the ninth floor of the spire, shivering in a fine — albeit wrinkled — spider-silk robe she’d unearthed from the bottom of her wardrobe. The Spire Council, nine in all, sat at a long table along the back wall. Janalack schooled her expression into something she hoped resembled contrition. 

“Explain yourself,” said the one she assumed to be the leader, because he sat at the centre. 

Janalack cleared her throat. She would say something eloquent. Something so beautiful and persuasive they could not help but be swayed. “If you think about it, really this isn’t my fault.” 

***

The whole thing started twelve days earlier, when Janalack woke with a pounding headache to find Avsera perched on her chest, waving a paper in her face and midway through a monologue. She made a questioning noise in his direction. 

“This is the entryway into the complex bureaucracy that stands between you and your desired research.” 

“What?” 

“You need to fill out this form to request a body to dissect.” 

So she filled out the form and brought it up to the requisite office. Two days later, which she spent either in the library or at the Docks Bar with Callien and Kari, she had still heard nothing in response. By the end of the Tresset she would be busy with classes once more — already there were papers due she had not written, but the time differentials between realms would make up for that. 

“It is a bureaucracy,” said Avsera, flatly, when she complained on the evening of the second day. By the third, she left Sairiba behind to explore the realm paths. This had been a great hobby of hers in her younger days, before Viratel grew older and frail and could no longer do without her help for days or weeks at a time. The warmth was a pleasant change. 

A striped, six-legged beast ambled past in the distance, hazel-and-white coat blending with the trees. It let out a low snort, strangely musical, answered by another in the distance. Janalack sat down on a rock, legs stretched out before her and crossed at the ankles, watching as the herd gathered together, facing north as their voices rose in song.

Clouds boiled in the distance. Branches danced and snapped as wind raced through the trees. She braced herself but the rain that followed was warm, strangely thick, crystallized like slush. It melted in her palms. Lightening flashed overhead; thunder reverberated through her bones. Abruptly the rain eased, only to be replaced by a freezing gale so strong it knocked her from her perch. Tresset weather. Janalack whooped, voice drowned out by the wind. 

Over the years, she had combed through dozens of accounts of the origins of the tresset. Many linked it to the fall of the gods, as Viratel had done, while others preferred natural explanation. The only part most could agree on was that the first ever tresset coincided with the advent of the new calendar, eight hundred and sixteen years earlier. She knew of no animal but humans who had any response to it, but maybe… Of course she would need to wait for one of the creatures to drop dead on its own; she had never been a hunter. 

That night, Janalack slept under the stars, newly revealed by a break in the storm clouds, curled up on a dry path under the trees. With the time differential, she could stay until mid-morning and make it back to the Spire in time for lunch (forging in the other realms was a dangerous sport, subject of a variety of menacing notes in the _Guide to Foreign Realms_ ). 

It thundered all through the second day, the air still and dry. The herd huddled in close, bodies trembling. They did not notice Janalack watching — no predators, then, or she looked or smelled too unlike them, or they all sheltered in the tresset. Some of the beasts had blue-black markings around the eyes she had originally taken as resulting from sex until further investigation disproved this hypothesis. 

She wandered under the crimson sky, letting her skin dry in the warmth. And then she struck gold. It was nearing mid-morning by then, though with the light muddy and diffuse it was hard to tell, and she was reluctantly considering returning to her own realm. The beast lay on its side, emaciated, laced in old scars, but plainly its death had been peaceful, a matter of old age rather than predation. Recent, too: it had only begun to attract a circling of flies. 

Fingers wrapped tight around the beast’s ankle, she hauled ineffectually. Flies settled on her arms and she stopped, peering down at their speckled red wings. It was too cold in Sairiba; she could not capture any to observe. But it was not time to get distracted. She shook them off, gently. Hauling at the animal had no effect. Tongue tip poking between her teeth, she inched open a realm-path directly below the body — ordinarily she did not need to be so specific, but she didn’t want to drop the thing into the dining hall or the middle of someone’s office. 

Instead it tumbled onto her carpet, along with a shower of dirt. Back in her own realm, Janalack stepped hurriedly over the dead animal to change into dry clothes and wrap her hair in patterned scarf, pulled gloves up to her elbows. After a few minutes of tugging at the carpet, she determined it would need to be sacrificed in the name of science. 

She bathed dirt from thick fur with soap and water, hands sinking in to her wrists. If she had the skill, it would make a good coat. Afterwards, she cut away a strip of fur over the centre of the torso. The skin was soft and beige and thicker than expected; she passed a scalpel blade — purchased in a dank little shop on the Evatan border at a price that still made her wince a year later — over and over until finally it split. She rolled the skin back; pinned it to the carpet. 

***

The project took days; she could not have said how many. Janalack had hollowed gaps in the ice of her wall to store the organs for dissection, spent a long morning hunched over her sketches before she was ready to transport anything to her makeshift freezer. 

By the third day her room took on a faint coppery scent that seeped into her clothes, drawing anxious looks when she stepped out for food or to stretch her legs. Returning to her room afterwards, only to fade into the background the moment her scalpel met flesh. She started with the brain: hearts and limbs and stomachs she understood, but the brain refused to yield its secrets. 

Some evenings, when her breaks coincided with their meetings, she met up with Callien and Kari at the Docks Bar. She laid out her research on the countertop — faintly sticky, it pulled fibres away from the paper — and told them of her discoveries. They were good listeners; quiet, unmindful of being clipped by her flailing arms as she explained. 

“Are you sure you should be doing this?” asked Kari, when she finished. “You seem obsessed. You missed class today and yesterday.” 

“It’s the tresset. We don’t have class,” said Janalack. 

“The tresset has been over three days. Have you not noticed the change in weather?” asked Callien. 

“Before it was cold. Now it is also cold. Also we spend all of our time indoors, without any windows. Because of the cold.” 

“Attendance is a prerequisite of graduation,” said Callien. 

“I’m not here to graduate, I’m here to learn things I care about,” said Janalack. 

And so it continued. Callien visited, once; hung around in the entranceway for a beat, then walked away without saying anything. Avsera visited, too, perched on her desk with all his limbs tucked in to avoid the blood and talked at her, milky pale beneath his freckles, eyes fixed on the ceiling. 

“There is value in patience for what one does not find enjoyable,” he said. “There is value in education beyond your interest.” 

It was a long time before she had her next visitor. She was cleaning up — now the dissections were over, the detritus had come distracting — when an unfamiliar figure appeared in her doorway. Thirty minutes later, she stood before the council. 

***

“I fail to see how this was in any way not your fault,” said the lead councillor. “Were you possessed by a malevolent spirit? Did you ingest mind-altering substances without your knowledge?” 

“You didn’t provide me with what I needed, so I found an alternative,” said Janalack. 

“Ms. Nabaran, you are a first-year student with several consecutive, unexcused absences. You have submitted no work. You are on the verge of expulsion. We have no reason at all to grant you request, even if we were in the habit of doing so for students at your level, which we are not.” 

When Janalack said nothing, another council member spoke, this one roundish and younger by a decade or two than any of the others. “We have been extraordinarily patient. Were you one of ours, we would not be having this conversation — you would be gone already.” 

“I don’t understand what your problem is,” said Janalack. “I’m not bothering anyone. I’ll even pay to have the room cleaned after I leave. If you don’t like me working in there, the spire is huge. I’m sure it has lots of space.” 

The leader swelled, puffing up like a tree frog in indignation. At first it seemed his indignation was so great he could not speak. “Know your place!” He breathed hard through his teeth, face going scarlet. “You will have access to the library as long as you remain here. You may even continue your classes, if you so desire. But you will be gone on the first ship come summer.” 

“Fine. Is that all?” 

The leader waved a hand. “Get out of my sight.” 

***

That night, Janalack walked out onto the ice to watch the storm wall, moonlit waves cresting beneath an unusually cloudless sky. She hurled a snowball, watched as it fell short, punching a hole in the fresh snow. Everyone was as unreasonable here as everywhere else. She hurled another snowball. This time, it plonked into the ocean. 

She sat for a long time despite the cold, despite the danger the storm bells would ring and she would be caught out in the vast emptiness of the ice to be pummelled by hail. The waves roared dull in her ears, a sound deep enough to feel in her bones; wind-whipped snow and frozen spume stung at exposed skin, stinging in the night air. In moments like this she thought to be human was to live in eternal frustration, for her cage of flesh and bone, so fascinating and wonderful and complex and fragile, could not keep her alive to sit forever with the world’s beauty. 

She stood when her limbs went stiff, her cheeks long since numb. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, blinked against the frost in her eyelashes as she slipped along the path back to the city, an uneven, zigzagging route topped by an inch of fresh ice — come sunrise, it would be sprayed in gravel. 

Coming into the city from this direction, the hospital sat at some distance from the next building. The doors were double-sealed against the cold but unlocked; Janalack slipped inside and waited as her limbs prickled painfully back to warmth. Feet wiped clean on the mat, she padded down the empty halls with her jacket draped over her arm. 

Teveska was a small city; half the rooms were empty. In one, an elderly woman slept with her light on, warm glow lighting the white of her hair. Janalack froze in the doorway — for a moment she imagined it was Viratel lying there. But her mentor was tough, for all her recent illness; Janalack had no reason to worry for her. She moved on to the next room, where a new mother held her baby to her chest, staring down at it with quiet intensity as she ghosted her fingers over its cheek. 

Idly, Janalack opened and closed the cupboard doors, the ones that were unlocked, gaze skimming over bottles of pills and tinctures. Most she had made, at one point or another. Next she found a linen closet. One of the linens shifted. A moment later Avsera appeared, dishevelled, eyes red like had been crying, cheek darkened by bruises, right arm bandaged and pinned at his side.

“I bet you’re supposed to be in bed,” said Janalack, brooding momentarily forgotten. “Looks like you didn’t have such a good day.” 

“It can hardly be counted as a personal failing, seeing as you are in the hospital as well.” 

“I was taking a walk and got cold. How did you personal-failing your way in here?” 

“To lose a fight is to be underestimated.” 

Janalack lifted the boy out of the linens and into her arms. “That’s true. Or it sounds true; I have a policy not to get into fights in the first place.” Avsera was uncharacteristically silent. “Come on, point me to your room.” 

They had put him in with the old woman, who offered a brittle smile as Janalack settled him back into bed. Avsera fidgeted unhappily but stayed put, sheets clutched to his chest. Janalack was on the point of leaving when his voice halted her. 

“I can offer you nothing in exchange but advice. It is this: voluntary association creates obligation no less than contract or family. Good night.” 

Janalack froze, staring down at the old woman who lay now with her eyes closed, narrow face tilted back. Avsera must have figured it out, somehow. She had enough of her own memories of being an intelligent child not to find him uncanny, at least not until this moment. 

She said, “You can’t give advice when you’re all bruised up.” But that evening, she packed her things and opened a realm path and walked. 

***

For all her intermittent worry the months apart had worn away the image of Viratel’s fragility in her mind, so that when she stepped out of the sheeting rain into the warm confines of the house by the market, she expected a woman weathered but hard, all ropy muscle and wind-burnt skin — Viratel had been old as long as Janalack had known her, but old in a timeless way, a hard, wrinkly shell hiding the strength of a woman half her age. Now, as she wrung water from her hair and toed off her boots, it was a fragile, greying creature who watched from an armchair in the corner. 

“Has my mind fled at last, or is this my wayward apprentice remembering a promise?” Her voice came out cracked and rough, its familiar sound no more than an undercurrent, and Janalack froze with muck seeping into her stockinged feet, tensed to turn around and run, back to Sairiba or out east or anywhere. But it would be no use, now: this memory would rest forever crouched like a specter over the old. 

“Viratel, I’m sorry —” she started. Sorry for what? For leaving, for not coming back, for forgetting? For all those arguments over the years, when she’d smile and laugh and slip away to the realm paths for weeks until the seas between them had calmed? “For — anything that you’re mad about, generally. Choose-your-own-apology type thing. How are you? You look good.” 

“Janalack, don’t waste my end times with this nonsense. If I wanted an apprentice who cared about the business, I’d have hired one. If I wanted an apprentice at all, I’d have hired one.” 

Janalack chuckled despite herself, clutched dramatically at her chest. “Vira, please tell me, what tincture can fix my heart? It has been broken by a mean old woman.” 

Viratel patted the spot beside her. “Come sit. Tell this mean old woman about the wide world.” 

Janalack sat, grinning at the sour expression on Viratel’s face when she put her damp socks up on the couch cushions. “Well, it turns out I’m incorrigible no matter where I go, so you can be at peace knowing I don’t try to bother you especially,” she said. “It’s not my fault, either, even though the rules in Sairiba aren’t stupider than anywhere else; they’re just stricter about getting people to follow them.” 

“You’ve been kicked out,” said Viratel. 

“I haven’t! I mean, I think I haven’t. Anyway, they got mad when I did dissection in my room. I had to improvise because it takes forever to get requests approved.” 

“And how long is this ‘forever’ may I ask?” 

“ _Vira_ , don’t be mean, you know I’m impatient.” She scooted over, tucked herself beside her mentor to share the blanket though she was not cold. Thin, knobbly fingers squeezed hers. 

“Janalack, I have known you most of my life and raised you from a child. I would venture this entitles me to offer advice even now you are out of my employ.” 

“Venture away.” Apparently not being Viratel’s apprentice had some benefits — she’d never asked permission to criticize before. 

“Finish things,” said Viratel. Her eyes, crevassed deep in her face, were pale green and rheumy with cataracts. They fixed on Janalack’s own, unblinking. 

“That’s it?” asked Janalack. 

“Even when it is hard, or boring, or miserable. Don’t use your escape hatch. Finish things.” 

***

Janalack lay awake on the sofa in Viratel’s spare nightgown while her own clothes hung on the line to dry. The rain still pounded outside — by morning, the flood reservoirs would be full, the market square reduced to muck. She thought of her siblings, how she and Tavi and Nayonen would go out in bare feet to let the winter mud squish between their toes while Cassinat stood on the porch and shouted at them to come back in before they got in trouble, and scowled when they tracked mud all over the house. There was little danger of running into them here, she supposed, so long as she checked who was in the market before heading out. 

Janalack huffed in frustration, threaded her hands through her hair. It was the heat that kept her awake — ordinarily she could sleep anywhere from a blizzard to the rocky floor of a canyon under the blazing sun, but not in the sticky Kemataral humidity. She would stay longer, if it weren’t for the weather. Besides, the situation at the academy was nothing so serious it couldn’t be fixed with touch of groveling and, if necessary, bribery. 

A crack spread in a spiderweb over the ceiling. She might fix it, before she left. Left where? She wouldn’t bother with Sairiba. That was used up, not worth the effort of making it work, no matter what Viratel said — Janalack loved the old woman dearly, better than her own mother and father, sometimes; certainly they spent more time together, over the years, but she never could stop with the advice, forever picking and picking and picking away, so sure she knew best. (Usually, she did.) A deep, crackling cough broke the silence. Janalack pressed her hands over her eyes until she saw stars. 

It wouldn’t do either of them any good, for her to sit here as Viratel withered. Janalack was impatient by nature. Her hovering would do nothing but disturb the peace, especially if she needed to go into the city and ran into her parents or sisters or brother — she shouldn’t start a fight with Cassinat newly married. Viratel was still coughing. Distance and a closed door should have diffused the sound better than it did. 

Abruptly Janalack stood. The air crackled at her extended fingertips, shimmering as if from heat. She hesitated, pressure building within her, fingertips growing hot. She would come back in a few days or weeks, no empty promises like the last time, tell Viratel stories of the world so she didn’t get bored waiting for — Janalack dropped her hand, shuddering. 

In the kitchen, she crushed and boiled dried mint, left it to steep, filtered out the dregs, poured it into an elegant mug swirled in greens and blues. Proper ceramic, after seven years — seven decades, maybe — of drinking from the same tin cup and eating from the same tin plate. She’d made Janalack buy her own when she started her apprenticeship, laughed when she’d gone looking for pottery. 

Viratel sat up in bed, sheets pooled at her feet, forehead beaded with sweat. Janalack set down the tea and took her hand. 

She said, “you’re right, Vira. I don’t finish things. But I’ll stay here with you, until the end.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're ever actually trapped out in a snowstorm, you should dig yourself a snow cave to shelter in, but you shouldn't eat the snow — if you don't have another way to stay hydrated, melt it first so you don't lose body heat.


End file.
